


When All is Said and Done

by missbecky



Series: Still Standing [2]
Category: Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Major Violence, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-18
Updated: 2012-08-18
Packaged: 2017-11-12 09:57:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 57,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/489602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missbecky/pseuds/missbecky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The CIA finally comes looking for Sands, and El and Sands begin to understand how their fates are connected. Second in the Still Standing trilogy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When All is Said and Done

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to [After the Dust Has Cleared](http://archiveofourown.org/works/489566).
> 
> Originally posted to ff.net in 2003 following their chapter system.

Chapter 1: El Hears a Rumor

 

Time passed. El Mariachi settled down in the town of Villa de Cos, in the state of Zacatecas, about an hour away from the capital city. He played the guitar and taught children how to play, and he lived alone. 

The bloody affair with the Escalante cartel had happened exactly one year ago. 

He did not think about that. To El, the months following his rescue of El Presidente were off limits. He simply did not think about them. These days his life was quiet. He had finally gotten his wish. He was free. He had found peace. There was no need to remember things that were not peaceful, things that were not simple.

Life, with all its inherent problems and wounds and troubles, went on, as it always did, but he paid it little mind. He would never be happy again, as he had been in the days when he had known the love of a woman and the laughter of a child, but he had his music, and no one bothered him, and so he was as content as he could be.

The old men and their talk didn’t touch him. He just sat in his corners, satisfied just to be there, outside of them, not one of them. He never participated in their talk; he just let their words wash over him, so much meaningless noise.

At night he dreamed of Carolina, and in the morning his skin would be wet with tears.

One day he found a piece of scrap metal in the front yard of the local church, and took it home with him. For a day and a night he sat with his guitar in his lap, sliding the metal up and down the strings on the neck of the guitar, reveling in the shivery sound of the notes. 

The next day he threw the metal away. He did not play the guitar that way again.

On a warm day late in February, nearly one year to the day when he had destroyed the cartel, the talk he had been trying so hard to avoid finally caught up to El Mariachi.

They knew who he was, of course, the people of the town. Most of them did not bother him, however, and he was grateful for their silence. Today he was sitting in the bar down the street from his house, at the same table he always sat at. Behind him two old men were eagerly sharing the latest gossip. El heard them, but he was not really listening.

And then one of the men said something that brought his attention sharply into focus.

“. . .the American and his partner.”

“My cousin said they were in his town last month, asking questions.”

“What did he tell them?”

“He told them nothing! What could he say? He knows nothing.”

“But he has visited you. He has been here! He has seen _him_.”

El gripped his glass tightly and told himself he was not going to turn around, he was not.

“He wouldn’t say anything. Not to them.” The speaker snorted. “Those Americans with their rich suits and their guns. They thought he was a dirty Mexican, just like all the others. They couldn’t wait to leave.”

He realized the old men _wanted_ him to turn around. They knew he always sat here. They had taken their places behind him deliberately. They had wanted him to hear their conversation.

El drained his glass in one long swallow, slammed it onto the table, and stalked out of the bar.

He managed to forget about what he had heard for a whole two days. On the third day, he dreamed of a drawling voice asking if he was still standing, and when he woke up his hands were trembling. But that morning there were no tears, and that was something to be thankful for.

He spent the day pacing his small house, cursing himself and the weakness that drove him. Call it curiosity, call it a romantic streak, call it a need to know the truth, call it whatever you wanted. Whatever it was, it compelled him to take action.

He hated that aspect of himself. But he could not deny that part of his heart was quietly exultant. And with every passing hour, that part of him grew louder, content to be quiet no more.

As the sun went down, he finally surrendered. As soon as it was dark, he packed his few belongings into a bag, put the bag and his guitar case in the trunk of his car, and drove away from Villa de Cos. 

He went north. He did not tell anyone he had left. 

****

The village in Culiacan was unchanged, still noisy and dusty and full of laughing, happy people. They seemed not to remember the bloody attempted coup that had torn their world apart, only a year ago. El looked at the adaptability of the villagers and nodded in satisfaction. These people, men and women who had fought for El Presidente and Mexico itself, were proof that men like Marquez, men like Barillo, men like Escalante, would not win in the end. Not so long as people like the ones in this village still lived.

Everything was the same. Even the house in the mountains was the same as he remembered it. El walked up to the front door and knocked before he could lose his courage.

The man who answered the door had changed, however, finally giving El concrete proof that a year had indeed passed since he had been in this place. Ramirez had aged badly since El had seen him last. His hair was almost completely gray, and he had lost a large amount of weight. Only his dark eyes were the same. He stared at El without even a trace of a welcoming smile. “I knew you would show up here.”

El stood on the stoop and waited to be invited in. “How did you know that?”

Ramirez shrugged. “Call it a lucky guess.” He stood aside and opened the door wider.

El walked inside, glancing at the white-and-tan chihuahua that looked up at Ramirez hopefully. The retired FBI agent walked right past the dog, though, and its ears drooped a little.

“I need your help,” El said, and then he waited. He hoped Ramirez knew how rare it was for him to admit such a thing.

 _But at least I admit it_ , he thought, and winced inwardly. He was doing it again. Arguing with phantoms, defending his words and actions to a man who wasn’t even there. For months after the cartel, it had been like this, but since November, and this year’s Day of the Dead festival, he had been successful in silencing that drawling voice in his head. He had hoped he would never hear it again. Yet now, just two steps into Ramirez’s house, the old need to explain himself to that voice had come bounding right back.

The former FBI agent nodded. He had not seen El’s hesitation, and momentary expression of self-directed anger. He looked tired, and El wondered suddenly if his health was failing. That would explain the weight loss, the shadow on the man’s face.

“Everyone needs my help,” Ramirez sighed. He began walking toward the back of the house. 

“You were FBI,” El said. “You must still have friends in Washington. I need you to contact them.”

“I was a field agent in San Antonio,” Ramirez said as they passed the swinging doorway to the kitchen. “I spent very little time in Washington.”

“But you know people,” El pressed.

“What do you want?” Ramirez asked. He shook his head. “You come here out of nowhere, and expect something from me. So tell me now what it is that you want, and I will tell you if I can do it for you.”

This was fair enough. El nodded. “All right.” He took a deep breath. “I have heard things, and I need to know if they are true. I was hoping you would know people who could tell me that.”

Ramirez paused in front of the screened door leading to his back porch, one hand on the mesh screen, ready to push the door open. “Tell you what?”

“If the CIA is looking for me.”

“You have heard this?”

El said nothing. He thought the answer to that question was fairly obvious.

Ramirez nodded, as if to himself. He pushed open the door and stepped out onto the porch.

El did not follow him. “Will you help me?” 

Ramirez just stood there, waiting for him, holding open the screen door.

He sighed. He had come here because there was nowhere else for him to go. It was either come here or head southwest, to Puerto Vallarta, and he had flatly refused to even entertain that idea. But apparently it had been a mistake to see Ramirez. The older man wanted nothing to do with him.

He stepped out onto the porch. He would make his apologies and leave, never to return.

He had just started to speak when he became abruptly aware that he and Ramirez were not alone. A third man was sitting in a cane chair halfway down the length of the porch.

This man stood up. He was grinning. “Well, damn, El. It’s good to see you again!”

*********

Chapter 2: It’s Good to See You Again

 

El just stared. Time, it seemed, had no effect on Sands. The man looked the same as he had when El had last seen him. 

He still wore his dark hair down to his shoulders. He was still slender. He was deeply tanned. He wore opaque wraparound sunglasses to hide his blindness, and he was dressed in black. Twin gunbelts criss-crossed his hips. Nothing about him suggested that any part of the past year had been any kind of hardship for him. 

Yet there _was_ something different, El realized. Sands carried himself with confidence now, and an air of coiled grace. Sands looked like a man who had been tested – severely tested – but who had passed the test and come out the other side. 

“Well, that’s a fine way to say hello,” Sands smirked. “You’ve gone from a man of few words to a man of no words with remarkable speed, El.” 

Because he could think of no response to this, El turned to Ramirez. “Why is he here?” he asked. 

“The same reason you are,” Ramirez said. The former FBI agent sat down on a chair, and exhaled heavily. “Wanting information.” 

“Why, Jorge! I’m surprised at you. I stopped by for a visit, to see how my old friend was doing.” Sands had not stopped smiling. His voice was bright, happy. He rocked on his heels like he was about to burst with good energy. To El, he had never seemed more insane. “That hurts, when you say I only want to use you.” 

Ramirez did not dignify this with a response. 

“Then you can help,” El said, ignoring Sands. He was pleased with himself for having the foresight to come out here. He had begun to think this had been a wasted trip. But now Ramirez would get him the information he needed, and then…. Well, he would figure out what to do next once he knew what he was facing. 

“No, I can’t,” Ramirez said. “I told you I don’t know anybody. Not to get the kind of information you need.” There was an edge to his voice now. He heaved himself out of his chair. “Now, if you would excuse me.” He opened the screen door and let himself into the house. 

El was left alone on the porch with Sands. He happened to be looking at the man as the screen door slammed shut, and so he saw the transformation that came over the CIA agent. The moment he was sure Ramirez was gone, Sands dropped the cheerful facade. The humor fled from his face, and he looked deadly serious. 

He looked like a killer. 

“What is wrong with him?” El asked, and sat in the chair Ramirez had just vacated. 

“Cancer,” Sands said. “I think. I ‘accidentally’ wandered into his bathroom the other day, and found a lot of pill bottles. Of course I have no idea what they’re really for. Could be vitamins for all I know.” 

El was sorry to hear it. He liked Ramirez. “Why doesn’t he go back to the U.S.?” 

Sands shrugged, and sat down. “Why don’t you ask him that?” 

An uncomfortable silence fell. El remembered that the last time he had seen this man, Sands had waved to him. He cleared his throat. “How have you been?” 

“Great, just great,” Sands said evenly, with no hint of the hearty cheer he had spoken with earlier. “There’s a surprising amount of work out there for blind gunfighters.” 

El nodded. “That is what you have been doing?”

“Well, at first I was going to hire myself out to a carnival, you know, charge people money to see the man with no eyes, travel Mexico, see the sights. But then I remembered.” 

Knowing he would regret it, El took the bait anyway. “Remembered what?” 

“Why, that I’m blind, of course!” Sands laughed. “I can’t see the sights! So that sort of shot the idea of the traveling carnival all to hell.” 

El decided he hated that laugh. He much preferred the old, sullen Sands. 

“And you came here. . . why?” 

“You know why,” Sands said. All trace of that dark humor had left him. “The same reason you’re here. They’re looking for us.” 

“Who?” El asked. He wanted to hear Sands say it. 

“My old employers, El my dear friend. The good ol’ Central Intelligence Agency has finally come looking for me. I’m not so sure why they want you, though. Probably just as a sideshow attraction, the mariachi who goes around shooting up drug cartels in his spare time. Hell, they might even want to offer you a job. Maybe you should let them find you.” 

“Why wait so long?” El asked. “All that was a year ago.” 

“Don’t you read the papers? Watch TV? There’s been a war in the Middle East. Priorities, you see. But now all that’s winding down, and they can finally devote time to hunting down their rogue agent in Mexico.” Sands shrugged. “I didn’t expect them to take this long, either.” 

“Then why did you come back here?” El asked. “This is the first place they would look for you.” 

“It _was_ the first place they looked,” Sands said. “They’ve moved on by now, following my trail. I do sort of stand out, you know. 

“I came here to see if Jorge could contact anyone in DC, find out just how serious they are. Maybe they’re just killing time until they get pulled off the assignment for something new and exciting.” He paused. “Or maybe they mean it.” 

Suddenly El understood something. No one else would have known it, because Sands was just that good at hiding what he truly felt, but El had spent a lot of time around him, maybe more than anyone else ever had. He knew this man, better than Sands realized. 

And what El saw now, what Sands was trying so hard to hide, was that he was terrified. For Sands, giving up his hard-won independence would be a fate worse than death.

“How long have you been here?” he asked. 

Sands cocked his head to one side, thinking it over. “A week,” he finally decided. 

El was silent. He thought of his quiet existence in Villa de Cos, his guitars and his music, and suddenly it seemed like he hadn’t been living at all for the past year. He had only been marking time. Waiting, it seemed, for something like this. And he could curse at himself all he wanted, but the truth was there in the quickened beat of his heart, and the renewed energy running through his veins. The truth was, he felt more alive now than he had in months. 

“What will you do now?” he asked. 

“I don’t know,” Sands said. And that, El knew, was the closest he would ever come to admitting his fear. 

“Maybe it would not be so bad,” he offered, trying unsuccessfully to keep a straight face.

He had thought maybe the CIA agent would shoot him for that. Instead Sands just sat there, his shoulders hunched as though to make himself smaller in his chair. 

This was not the reaction El had expected. 

And it occurred to him that what he had just said was not funny, not in the slightest. That it was, in fact, cruel. Sands had been through hell. The man deserved better, especially from him. 

But it was very easy, he was finding, to slip into the old rhythms. To find that peculiar mixture of kindness and hostility that worked best when dealing with Sands. To remind himself to expect nothing from the man, and hope for everything, all at the same time.

And he was remembering. Things he hadn’t thought about in a year. Dirty motel rooms, dirty bars, dirty fights.

An ugly pink house surrounded by bushes with red flowers. 

A hacienda draped in honeysuckle, and a bloody courtyard.

Ramon Escalante.

_Are you still standing?_

_Still._

_Then let’s get the fuck out of here._

**** 

El remembers little of the time immediately following the destruction of the Escalante cartel. He is in a lot of pain, and bleeding badly. Everything he looks at is overlaid with a surreal shine that makes him wonder if this is the precursor to the light everyone supposedly sees before they die. 

He and Sands reel across the courtyard, arms about each other, staggering like drunks. He can barely walk, and he is forced to lean heavily on the CIA agent, much to Sands’ dismay. “You’re crushing me,” Sands complains. “I can’t breathe.” 

“That’s because you got shot in the chest,” El snaps. “That’s not my fault.” 

“Well, in a way it is,” Sands mutters, and is silent. 

Then there is a long gray blank in his memory. The next thing he remembers is sitting in a car, an old convertible painted red and white. One of Escalante’s cars. He looks stupidly at the steering wheel. “No keys.” 

Sands reaches up with a bloody hand and pulls down the visor over the driver’s side. A set of keys tumbles out. 

Then another one of those blank walls obscures his memory. 

What he remembers next is so strange it surely cannot have happened. He is driving, somehow, and Sands is helping. They are sitting together in the driver’s seat, and he steers while Sands works the pedals, because he cannot use his wounded leg. He calls out when it is time to brake in a feeble voice. He is cold all over, except for the agonizing fires burning in his side and his leg. Sands is slumped against him, his head on El’s shoulder. There is a liquid rattle to the agent’s breathing now, and his entire front is soaked in blood. A thick ribbon of blood trails down his chin. But when El says, “Stop,” he mashes down the brake, right on cue. 

After that there is only confusion. Bright lights and faces, a wrinkled old man who must be a doctor because he is wearing a white coat. Hands touch his side and he screams with the pain, and the scream echoes as it follows him down to unconsciousness. 

When he wakes he is in a clean, narrow bed, and he knows he will live. It is truly over. 

**** 

All this passed through El’s memory in the span of a moment, reminding him of the history he shared with Sands, a history he could not forget. 

They had stayed in the hospital for two weeks. Afterwards, they had made their slow way to Puerto Vallarta, and arrived on a sunny Thursday morning in late March. El had breathed deep of the ocean air, and smiled. 

He had only stayed there a week. There was no fond farewell, no handshake, nothing to indicate they understood how lucky they were just to be alive. El had simply walked out to the car, where his guitar case was already waiting. 

He had held up a hand. “Stay out of trouble.” 

Sands had raised a hand in return. “See you around.” 

And that was it. He had driven away, and ended up in Zacatecas, and eventually the town of Villa de Cos. He had found a guitar maker and a house, and he had considered one chapter of his life over. It was time for a new one to begin. 

What he should have realized, he thought now, was that even though the chapter ended, the story itself still went on. 

El looked at Sands. Deep in his chest, the old excitement was stirring. The air seemed so much crisper than it had been yesterday. Everything was clear and bright. 

“You could come to my village,” he said. 

Sands frowned. “Oh gosh, El, that’s very kind of you, but I don’t exactly see us hiding out in your little village, playing out the Mexican version of The Odd Couple.” 

El shook his head, unsure whether to laugh or be worried. That was the thing about Sands. He used words like “look” and “see” -- and he meant them. El didn’t know if he merely liked to keep people off guard about his blindness, or if he genuinely didn’t care how strange it was to hear him talk like that. 

“Not to stay,” he said. “Just as a place to start.” 

“Is it safe?” 

El hesitated. The two old men in the village had made it sound as though the CIA agents were close. Too close. They had meant for him to understand Villa de Cos was not safe for him anymore, and if it wasn’t safe for him, it sure as hell wasn’t safe for Sands. But then, no place would be safe, not as long as those agents were still out there. And at least in Villa de Cos, he and Sands would have a chance to defend themselves. 

“Yes,” he lied. “It’s safe.” 

“Good.” Sands sat up a little straighter. “Then what the hell are we still doing here?” 

*********

Chapter 3: On the Road (Again)

 

Ramirez gave them lunch. Sands was eager to be on the road, but turning down a free meal was on his (very short) list of things to never do, so he was willing to stick around for a little longer. He even managed to smile and thank his host, and he thought he sounded pretty sincere about it, too. 

He would never tell El, but he had hated Puerto Vallarta. 

It had been inevitable, really. For months he had built up the city, put it on a pedestal in his head. He had thought of it as his haven, his refuge, the one place in the world where he would be safe, and free. Where he would, for the first time in his life, be happy. 

Instead, Puerto Vallarta had been one big disappointment. Circumstances had forced his hand, but he had not been sorry to leave. 

He supposed, had he possessed both his eyes and twenty million pesos, he would have felt differently about the city. 

By two o’clock, they were on the road. Ramirez had been happy to see them go. Dying by slow degrees was only making him surlier than normal, and his attitude had been grating on Sands’ nerves. He was actually glad El had come when he had – he wasn’t sure how much more of Ramirez’s doom and gloom he could have taken. 

And then he suddenly realized something. In taking up with El again, he had traded one sourpuss for another. Maybe this wasn’t such a good deal, after all. 

Then he gave a mental shrug. What the hell. 

El drove with the radio on, and some chirpy Spanish song bleated from the speakers. Sands reached over and felt along the console until he found the volume dial and switched it off. 

He could almost see El’s scowl.

“So,” he said brightly, “how long until we reach your lovely little town?” 

El said nothing, and Sands sighed. So they were back to this. El driving and himself the silent passenger. How little things had changed.

The miles unrolled beneath them. Sands dozed, letting the sounds of the world wrap themselves softly around him, trusting his instincts to wake him should something arise that needed his attention. 

Instead what woke him was El’s voice, sounding rather uncertain. “We have much to talk about,” the mariachi said. “So I will answer a question if you will answer a question. Does that sound fair?” 

“Oh my Christ,” Sands swore. “Look, I’m not Mister Secret Agent Man anymore, and you never were. So cut the crap. What do you want to know?” 

“Why didn’t you stay in Puerto Vallarta?” 

“I _did_ stay in Puerto Vallarta,” Sands said testily. He was annoyed at having his nap interrupted. It had been months since had gotten a good night’s sleep, and he was sick and tired of being tired all the time. “Until some of the local folk got wind of the fact that the CIA was looking for me, and tried to turn me in for the reward.” 

“Tried,” El repeated. 

“Well, I’m here now, aren’t I?” he snapped. Honestly, sometimes El had all the intelligence of a four-year old. 

“When was this?” 

“Six months ago.” 

“You don’t look like you’ve been on the run for that long.” 

He smirked. “That’s because apparently a surprising number of senoritas take pity on blind men in this country.” 

A long silence greeted this comment, and he couldn’t help it. He burst out laughing. 

“What is so funny?” El demanded. 

“I can just see the look on your face right now,” he said. 

El made one of those noises that meant he didn’t know what to say. Sands always liked hearing him make that sound. It meant he had said something that hit home, something that made El think – which wasn’t an easy thing to do. El was an uncomplicated man, and profound thoughts sat uneasily on him. The mariachi saw things in very clear black and white, and Sands enjoyed forcing El to consider things from different angles, and see the gray in the world. It was only a pale echo of his glory days of manipulation, but hey, he would take whatever he could get.

“What did you do in Puerto Vallarta before you had to leave?” 

“None of your goddamn business,” he retorted. 

“Fair enough,” El said. “Maybe you want to know what I have been doing.” 

“No, I really think I don’t,” Sands said. At the moment, all he wanted to do was sleep. “Whatever happened to your strong, silent act?” 

After that, El didn’t say anything. 

****

El would probably laugh to hear it, but since leaving Puerto Vallarta, Sands had actually imagined meeting the mariachi again. 

It was true. He had a vivid imagination, always had. Which was a damn good thing now. He needed every bit of help he could get, to make his way through the world now that he could not see it. But as long as he could create a mental picture of a place in his head, he managed to do all right. He had been in twelve towns over the last six months, and in three of those, and possibly a fourth, no one had even known he was blind. 

So, he had imagined running into El. Different ways, in different places. Usually in some manner that involved him having the upper hand, and laughing at the mariachi. He still had not forgiven El for what had happened in Puerto Vallarta, the thing that had made the mariachi leave. Some days it felt good to imagine a little belated revenge for himself.

But of all the ways he had imagined meeting up with El again, it had never been quite like this. 

It pissed him off that he had been reduced to this. Running and hiding from the very men he had meant to screw over. Well, fate had decided that he was the one to get royally screwed, a good old bend-over-and-grab-your-ankles screwing, and now nothing was the way it should be. 

The CIA, instead of looking fruitlessly for him while he laughed at them from the safety of Puerto Vallarta, was hot on his trail. He had narrowly escaped them twice already, evading them only through sheer luck and the fortuitous aid of sympathetic townspeople. But luck had a way of running out, and sooner or later he would encounter someone more mercenary than himself, and then he would find himself in the custody of his hated former employer. 

And he would never admit it aloud, but Sands was terrified of that fate. The only thing he had now was his freedom. Every day that he got by on his own was proof that Barillo hadn’t broken him, that he was still in control. If the CIA got their hands on him, he would never be free again. He would spend the rest of his miserable life in a little white padded room, drooling and waiting for his next dose of meds, too doped up to even remember he was blind. 

The thought made him shudder. 

“Cold?” El asked, his voice clearly indicating he knew this to be a stupid question. 

He wondered if El had any idea who they were dealing with. CIA agents were not people to fuck around with. Then again, he couldn’t really expect El to know that. The only CIA agent El had ever known was himself, and he was hardly the typical agent.

“Why are you helping me?” he asked. “You could hide from them better on your own, just tell me to go fuck myself. Or maybe make an anonymous phone call, tell them where I am.”

The chains on El’s jacket jingled as he shrugged.

Sands didn’t like that shrug. He would have preferred a snappy retort, maybe a punch in the mouth. He didn’t want El to lack an answer. 

Maybe, he thought, this was the man’s way of repaying him. After all, he had saved El’s life at Escalante’s hacienda, and El knew it.

The funny thing was, what El didn’t understand, was that the mariachi owed him nothing. For if he had saved El’s life at the hacienda, El had surely saved his, as well.

They had never talked about it, what happened on that day. In fact, during the week they had spent together in Puerto Vallarta, they had hardly spoken to each other at all. Sands did know, however, that El didn’t remember much of it. That was good. For El.

He remembered. Too much. Staggering from the courtyard, forced to cling to the mariachi, struggling just to breathe. The doctors told him later his lung had collapsed, and he had not been surprised, not one bit.

The drive to the hospital had been a nightmare. El had kept fading in and out, and the car had made dreamy loops across the road. Sands had done his best to keep them from plowing into anything, but it wasn’t like he could see where they were going, and his grip on consciousness had not been very strong, either. He hadn’t even cared much that he had been leaning on El like the world’s bloodiest loverboy.

But El had done it. Somehow they had gotten to the hospital, and there Sands had finally given up and fainted. Just before his release from the place, a nurse had said that if he had been any slower in getting there, he would have died from blood loss. 

He had not told El that. Some things were better kept to oneself.

****

Villa de Cos sounded just like every other sleepy Mexican town Sands had been in. Dusty, noisy, full of old cars that belched smelly exhaust, and people who talked loud and laughed louder. El lived in a small house in the center of town, on a busy street that probably never quieted, even in the middle of the night. 

One thing, however, set this town apart from all the others: Music. Every street had its own unique beat, and the sound of guitars mingled with the clearer tones of a piano, and the brass of a trumpet. A kid rode by on a bike with a jingling bell, bawling out the words to a popular song at the top of his lungs. And he was not the only one. People sang inside their homes, inside their cars, and even walking across the street. Everyone in Villa de Cos, it seemed, lived their lives to music.

“Well, I see why you decided to live here,” Sands drawled.

El made an exasperated sound. The trunk of the car slammed shut. “Hurry. I don’t want anyone to see me. I parked behind the house, but anyone could have seen me arrive.”

“I thought you were staying out of trouble these days,” he mocked.

“I am,” El said. “I want to stay that way. I don’t want them to see you.” Then he added, “Or to know I am back.”

Sands nodded. He understood this perfectly. “Everyone in this place has their own song,” he said, as he followed the jingling sounds of El walking up to the house. “I always imagined if I had a theme song, it would have a lot of brassy horns, and a pounding bass backbeat.” 

“Really?” El used his smartass tone, the one that surely went with a cocked eyebrow. 

“Oh yeah.” Sands grinned. He walked into the house, stumbling just a little on the stoop. 

El shut the door behind him. “Can’t you just hear the horns wailing when I walk into a room?” 

“Well, I do hear something wailing,” El muttered, then added something even more unkind in Spanish.

“I heard that,” Sands said.

El said something else, but Sands ignored him. He was focused on the room he was in, listening hard to the sounds of the house, feeling how far the walls were from where he stood. It was a skill he had honed considerably over the last twelve months. Walls and solid objects seemed to emanate an invisible signal, he had discovered. He could sense those signals, if he tried hard enough, and use them to create his mental picture of the room. Then he could navigate it with enough confidence that he didn’t have to stick his hand out in front of him like a fucking blind man. 

Right now he could tell he was in a small kitchen. They had indeed come in through the back door. Appliances hummed to his left, water dripped from a faucet to his right, and something lay directly in his path a few feet ahead -- probably a table and chairs.

“Do you even speak Spanish?” El asked again. 

“Well, what do you think?” he asked back, unable to believe he was having this conversation, unable to believe he was even here at all. What on earth had happened to his desire to do it all himself? Why the hell was he here? 

“I don’t know,” El said. 

“Of course I do.” And in flawless Spanish, Sands told El all about the mariachi’s ancestry, filthy peasants descended from dirty goats and born out of wedlock. He paused, then added that El himself needed a bath and wasn’t even a very good guitar player if he couldn’t play slide guitar. 

When he finished, there was a breathless silence while he waited to be punched in the nose. He could hear something, but he couldn’t tell what it was. 

It took him a moment to realize El was laughing, a nearly soundless laugh. 

“I stand corrected,” El said. “Where did you learn to speak it so well?” 

“Living here,” Sands said. “But when I got the assignment to come here, I went out and bought some Berlitz language tapes. I listened to those and I watched a lot of bad soap operas on Telemundo.”

El laughed even harder.

When he was sure El wasn’t laughing at him, Sands allowed himself to relax a little. He even laughed a little himself.

For the first time in six months, since this whole miserable affair with the CIA had started, he began to think that maybe things would turn out all right, after all.

*********

Chapter 4: Self-Pity 

 

It is El Mariachi’s turn to dream.

Carolina is looking up at him, one hand at her brow to shield her eyes from the sun. She is smiling. 

His daughter is holding Carolina’s other hand, and clutching her doll. She tugs at her mother, wanting to go to the market, like Carolina has promised. 

He smiles at them. He waves good-bye.

Then he hears the jeeps, the dull pulse of their engines. He is not prone to leaps of intuition, but he suddenly knows that something bad is about to happen. Fear seizes him, and he leans over the balustrade. For a sick moment that seems to last an eternity, he is unable to speak, then his throat unclenches, and he is able to scream her name.

Carolina looks up at him, then at the approaching vehicles. Her dark eyes widen.

He races down the stairs, slamming into the wall as he tries to make himself fly, so he can reach them that much faster. He runs out the door and is plunged into the bright sunshine at the very instant Marquez shoots.

And his whole world falls apart, right in front of him. He is stunned, too horrified to move as Marquez turns and points the gun at him. He only has eyes for Carolina, and his daughter, and their blood sinking slowly into the hot sand.

When the bullets rip into him, he scarcely feels the pain. He is consumed with grief, with loss, with an agony no physical pain can ever match. On his face in the dirt, he watches Marquez take the silver necklace, the gift he had given Carolina shortly before the birth of their daughter.

Marquez gets into a jeep. The engines roar and the vehicles drive away.

El Mariachi crawls to his wife. She is already dead.

His daughter is already dead.

He has left a bloody trail behind him in the dust. Men are running toward him, wanting to help, now that it is safe to do so. He does not even look at them.

He looks only at Carolina. Her eyes are open, unseeing. She will never smile at him again. She will never sing to their girl again. 

He drops his head and rests his cheek in the dust. He tries to find the strength to cry, but he had nothing more to give. He has given it all just to cross the distance separating him from Carolina. 

Still wishing he could weep, he falls unconscious.

****

El woke with a start. The tears were still wet on his cheeks. He brushed them away angrily. There would be no more sleep for him. He got out of bed and went over to the window. The occasional car passed on the street, and he could hear lively music from the bar down the block. It was almost three o’clock in the morning.

Dark despair washed over him, making him bow his head until his forehead touched the window. Hours like these, when it seemed like morning would never come, were always the worst. His grief was strongest during these times, and some nights he felt like he wouldn’t be able to carry on, that the strength needed to get up and leave the house and go on about his life was completely beyond him.

Tonight was one of those nights. Abruptly El decided to get drunk. Very drunk. Knowing who he was, the local bars vied for his favor, and they often gave him free bottles. He had quite an extensive array of liquors to choose from in his pantry.

Tonight, he thought, was a tequila night.

He turned away from the window. In the kitchen, he heard a sudden crash, and the unmistakable sound of breaking glass. A voice snarled a curse.

El hurried out of his room. He was a little dismayed to discover his heart was racing. When he had first heard the broken glass, he had thought it was someone smashing the window, that he had been found by the very people he was hoping to avoid. Then he had heard the voice and he had realized just who was out there.

The kitchen was dark, and for a moment that perplexed El, until he realized that Sands simply had not turned on the light. After all, he mused, it was not like the agent needed it.

He flicked the switch, bathing the kitchen in dull yellow light. Sands was standing at the kitchen counter, feeling his way through a cupboard. Shattered glass lay on the counter and on the floor; a strong smell of peppers filled the air. El made a face and opened the window. “What are you doing?”

“Looking for something to drink. Something strong.”

Without a word El walked over to the pantry in the corner. He opened it and peered at the many bottles lined up on the floor. “What do you want?”

Sands had turned around at the sound of the door opening. He grinned, a ghastly expression that told El he was not the only who had struggled with dreams of the past on this night. “Tequila. Lots of tequila.”

El grunted his agreement. He grabbed two bottles from the pantry, held them both with one hand, and used the other to grab Sands’ arm and steer him toward the table.

Predictably, Sands yanked his arm free. “Let go of me.” He made his way to the table on his own. He held his right hand out, feeling for the chair he knew had to be there, finding the back and pulling it out. He moved so he stood with one leg against the side of the chair, and then sat. 

El watched all this, fascinated. It occurred to him that making your way through the world when you couldn’t see it was quite a feat.

He opened one of the bottles and began to drink. The tequila burned all the way down, a fiery sensation he relished. He was looking forward to getting drunk, all right.

“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked.

“Oh, I don’t sleep much anymore,” Sands said. “Have you ever tried sleeping when you can’t even close your eyes? Trust me, it’s a very strange feeling.”

El decided he didn’t want to think about that one too much.

He put all his focus onto drinking. Lift bottle, swallow tequila, lower bottle.

Repeat as necessary.

****

Sands matched him bottle for bottle, and at some point El found himself carrying his entire stock in both arms from the pantry and dumping it on the kitchen table. “I’m tired of going back and forth,” he sulked, rather loudly. 

“Sure,” Sands said with a smile, and drained the bottle he was holding.

El stared at him. Even in the middle of the night, with no one around, Sands wore his sunglasses and his guns. He looked ready to bolt at a moment’s notice, to just get up and run right out the door and not look back.

“Why did you come with me?” El asked. He frowned at the bottle he had just opened. The label was nothing more than a blurry smudge, and he had no idea what was inside.

It didn’t taste bad, though.

“Let me put it to you this way,” Sands said. “Given a choice between staying with you and staying with Jorge, I choose you. Jorge was too crabby all the time.”

This struck El as amazingly funny. “I thought I was crabby all the time, too.”

“You? El my dear friend, you,” Sands pointed at him, “are many things, but crabby is not one of them.”

“Yeah? Just what am I?” El slurred.

“Hell if I know,” Sands said grandly. He reached for a new bottle, knocked over two, fumbled among the ones still standing, and grabbed one that was a violent dark green color. 

“All I know,” Sands continued, “is that you’re the only one still here. Let the record show.”

El nodded. “I’m still standing,” he said.

****

They drank. 

The sky was just beginning to lighten with dawn when Sands told El about his one and only encounter with Barillo. 

Being drunk had given Sands permission to indulge himself. There had always been a layer of the grandiose to his speech, but alcohol made him eloquent in a way El had never heard from him before. He talked about his relationship with Ajedrez, the daughter of Barillo. He told El that the sex had been good, that the element of danger and unease had been even better. He said Ajedrez had come after him, and made him think she wanted him. He had been flattered. He had decided to trust her, and tell her his plans. 

He told El the sinking feeling he had gotten when she had sat across from him at that table in the cantina, how he had believed then that he was going to die. He told El – as if El needed to be told – about the pain of betrayal.

He talked about waking up to see Barillo standing in the corner, face covered in bloody bandages. Trying to act like he hadn’t noticed the danger of his situation. Trying to act cool.

He told El what it felt like when they had ripped his eyes out, how he had screamed. “I didn’t beg, though.” His expression twisted with self-hatred. “But don’t get the wrong impression. It happened so fast I didn’t have time to beg. If they had drawn it out, you bet your ass I would have.”

He described the way the kid had helped him. The terrible moment in the taxi when he realized that he would have to fight them, and he would have to win. The gunfight with Barillo’s men. How he made himself a fool in order to make them laugh, so he could hear where they were. How he killed Ajedrez. 

The last thing he said was about the boy in the yellow T-shirt. “That kid saved my life. And I had told him to fuck off.” 

A long silence stretched out. El peered into his bottle and wondered when it had become empty.

He took a deep breath, and told Sands about Carolina. 

He described how they had met, how she had been innocently walking down the street, about to get caught in the middle of a shoot-out. He told Sands about his quest to find Bucho, never guessing he was searching for his own brother. He talked about the boy, the boy of his own story, and how he had realized that saving the life of the child was more important than any claims he might have on revenge. 

He talked about the new life he had found with Carolina, how beautiful she was. How she sang to him when he was trying to sleep. Her smile, her walk.

How betrayed he had felt when he had learned about her relationship with Marquez.

“She didn’t tell me, because she didn’t want to hurt me,” he said. “By the time she met me, she hadn’t seen Marquez in almost a year. She thought he didn’t want her anymore. She thought she was through with him.” 

He told Sands about their confrontation with Marquez in the bar, how Carolina had cried as she shot him. He said that he had truly believed the threat was gone, that they were free to live their lives together. 

After a few more drinks, he talked about the day he had lost them, his wife and his daughter. How his own life had hung by a thread for weeks. How he had not wanted to recover, so he could join them. How finally his thirst for revenge against Marquez had provided the spark he needed to live.

But he had not gone after Marquez. Instead he had found the sleepy town with its guitar-makers and its pleasant people. There had always been a reason not to go after the General, and he had begun to think he would never meet Marquez again. He told Sands how badly he had missed them, how badly he still missed them, how every day without Carolina hurt. He said that the pain had gotten easier with time, and he had learned how to cope with it. He said that he had believed his quiet life in the village would never end.

“And then, you,” El said. 

“And then me,” Sands said. His voice was laced with bitterness. “They should have drowned me at birth.” 

“They should have,” El agreed, and drained his latest bottle. 

“But they didn’t, and now we both have to live with me,” Sands said. “Damn the luck.” He was slurring his words by this point, but it was obvious that he was still a long way from passing-out drunk.

He drew one of his guns. “Maybe I should just make things easier for everyone,” he said. “Whaddaya say?” He put the muzzle of the gun against his temple. 

El let the bottle drop from his fingers. It hit the table on its side, rolled to the edge and wobbled there, precariously close to falling off. He suddenly felt very sober. 

He thought fast. 

“Don’t waste the bullet,” he said. 

Sands did not move for a long moment, then he sighed. “You’re right. Of course.” He lowered the gun. “I’m not even worth wasting a bullet on.” 

“Stop it,” El snapped, feeling braver now that the gun was not aimed at Sands’ head anymore. “Self-pity on you is like…like the cheap side of Sears.” As soon as the words left his mouth, he winced. He had gotten it wrong somehow, he knew that much.

He waited for Sands to raise the gun again, and this time pull the trigger. 

Then Sands spoke, in the lazy drawl that meant he was hiding a deeper, more genuine emotion. “El, my dear friend, I believe you mean to say, ‘Self-pity on you is like the softer side of Sears.’ And while I understand your sentiment, I’m afraid I cannot agree. My self-pity is indeed derivative and it is very unbecoming,” -- here his voice became hard and cold -- “but it is most definitely not cheap. It is bought and paid for, and the price was very dear. So forgive me if I happen to believe that I am entitled to it. And by the way, I believe if you don’t like that, you can go fuck yourself.” 

El nodded and relaxed a little in his chair. If Sands was angry, that meant he was fine. The danger was past. 

Sands put the gun away. He was sulky now. “Go to hell, why don’t you.” He lurched to his feet, staggered a few steps to the right, and promptly ran into the fridge. He cursed, righted himself, then made his way out of the kitchen. El heard him thud down the hall and then the door to the spare room slammed shut.

El just sat there. He searched among the bottles, looking for one that still had some liquor in it.

There was nothing left. With a loud sigh, El slumped forward and laid his cheek on his crossed arms on the table.

The bottle at the edge of the table rolled off and shattered on the floor. Deeply asleep, El never heard a thing.

****

When he woke, it was mid-afternoon. Bright sunlight streamed in through the window, reflecting off the curved side of a bottle, and hitting him square in the eyes. Groaning, one hand holding his forehead, El sat up.

Sands was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, one foot propped up on the back door behind him. He was smoking. He had obviously been standing there for a while; the cigarette was little more than a long thread of ash. He looked as bad as El felt. “We talked last night, didn’t we?” 

“We did,” El affirmed, then winced. He had to remember to speak in a softer voice. 

Sands nodded gingerly. “That,” he said, “is what I thought. I have absolutely no idea what we said, but I am fairly sure that whatever we did talk about – we probably shouldn’t have talked about.” 

So Sands wanted to act like last night had never happened. 

El had no problem with that. 

“Then we didn’t say anything,” he said. 

The merest hint of a smile crossed Sands’ face. “I knew there was a reason I liked you,” he said. 

And with that, leaving El sitting at the table in slack-jawed amazement, he dropped his cigarette to the floor, ground it out under his heel, pushed open the back door, and went outside. 

*********

Chapter 5: Shoot-out at Casa Del Mariachi

 

El stayed in the house all day -- what was left of it -- nursing his hangover. He had not gone on a drinking binge like last night in quite a while. He had forgotten the sheer misery of the day after, the pounding head, the churning stomach, the intense desire to just lay down and die.

On the bright side, at least he had something to think about besides Carolina.

Sands stayed in the backyard all through the afternoon, and on into the evening, sitting in the hot sun. Whether this was self-imposed penance for the night before, or just sheer stupidity, El didn’t know. He didn’t really care, either.

His memory of the night before was hazy at best, but he clearly remembered talking about Carolina. Worse, he remembered crying over her. Only a little, but tears were still tears. He tried to remind himself of what had happened in Puerto Vallarta, and say that now he and Sands were even, but he didn’t believe that. And it was no good telling himself that Sands couldn’t see him crying, because the CIA agent would have heard it in his voice.

Besides, that bastard always knew. He was blind, but El could hide nothing from him.

_I knew there was a reason I liked you._

Nothing about Sands made any sense. This enormous admission, so casually dropped, was just the latest bafflement.

 _Why?_ he thought. _What have I ever done to make you like me?_

The day was drawing to a close. The sun had been down for half an hour and only a swatch of darkest blue remained in the western sky to show its resting place. There was almost no wind tonight. El stood at the open back door and stared out. As far as he could tell, Sands had not moved in hours. For all he knew, the agent was asleep sitting up.

 _Just what do you think you are doing here?_ asked that drawling voice in his head. The voice he had spent months arguing with. The voice, he knew now, that had belonged all the time to the man sitting on his back lawn.

El sighed and folded his arms. If he was truly honest with himself, he had no idea what he should do next. It was not safe to stay in Villa de Cos, but he was tired of running, tired of playing someone else’s game. He had finally found a place where he could be happy, and he was not going to leave it.

 _And what about Sands?_ asked the voice. _Where does he fit into all of that?_

El didn’t know. And that was the problem. 

Out on the lawn, Sands cocked his head to one side.

El shook his head in amazement. He was still half inside the house, just standing here, not doing anything, not moving. Yet Sands had still heard him. The man’s hearing was nothing short of incredible.

He was about to call out when Sands suddenly leapt to his feet and turned around. He took two running steps, then faltered. His head turned from side to side. His right hand rose to feel the air in front of him. He looked utterly lost.

El lifted his foot and kicked the doorframe, making the chains on his pants jingle.

Immediately Sands’ head snapped around. He pointed at El. “Get in the house!” He started running again.

And finally El got it. Sands had not been listening to _him._

There were men outside his house. Men with guns, dressed in black so that they were barely distinguishable from the twilight gloom. El could barely see them. 

But he didn’t need to see them. Sands had done it for him, even without any eyes.

The soldiers creeping toward the house were not stupid. They saw Sands take off for the house and they realized their cover was blown. They rose to their feet, all three of them bringing their weapons to bear.

El’s eyes widened. Stupidly enough, all he could think of was the fact that he was completely unarmed. 

Sands reached the door, hitting it hard with one shoulder as he pushed his way past El and into the house. A split second later, the soldiers outside opened fire.

El whirled around, back inside his house. He threw the door shut behind him, and it was destroyed under the hail of bullets. Immediately he ducked, wrapping his arms about his head for protection. Wooden splinters flew into the kitchen, several of them striking him in the neck and arms, drawing blood even through his shirt. 

“Get your guns!” Sands shouted. He was stumbling through the kitchen, his pistols already in his hands, trying to find the window.

All day Sands had sat out there, fully armed. And now El understood why. The agent had expected an attack. He had wanted to learn the sounds of the neighborhood, so when the attack came, he would recognize it for what it was. He had known -- even after El had lied to him -- that the village was not safe.

There was no time to marvel at Sands’ cleverness. El raced through the house and found his shotgun in the living room. He picked it up just as the front door was kicked in.

Right at the moment when he pulled the trigger, he had a sudden terrified thought that the gun was not loaded. Then the weapon gave its satisfying boom, and the man in the door was hurled backward, his chest torn apart.

Immediately two other soldiers were there to take his place. Both of them carried automatic weapons. They sighted on El and fired.

El threw himself to the floor, ducking and rolling as he went. He was dimly aware that his house was being destroyed all around him, but he could not think about that. 

Gunshots sounded from the kitchen. Someone screamed.

“El!” shouted Sands. “Get in here and help me!”

 _Little busy now_ , he thought. He rolled up to his feet, and the shotgun boomed. One of the men in black fell, but the other continued shooting. El was forced to throw himself to the floor again to avoid the spray of bullets.

Shots rang out in the kitchen. Voices cried out in pain, and this time one of them belonged to Sands.

“El! Where the fuck are you?”

El pulled the trigger. The remaining soldier dived behind the TV. El shot at him again, blowing up his own TV in the process. He didn’t care. It was only an old black-and-white model anyway.

He got to his feet and started running toward the front of the room, and the dead men who lay there. He was about to run out of ammo. He wanted one of their weapons.

The soldier behind the TV came out from his cover, shooting wildly. 

El changed his mind in mid-stride. He pivoted on one foot and turned to his right. He leaped at the sagging couch. There was just enough room between it and the wall for a man to fit. He planted one foot on the seat cushion, intending to vault the back of the couch and land behind it. The couch, which was on wheels, slid a little closer to the wall with his weight, narrowing the space where he had thought to hide.

He had just begun his jump when pain bloomed in the back of his arm, near his shoulder. He was thrown forward. The right side of his chest hit the back of the couch, hard. Immediately his ribs began hollering with pain. He let himself fold over the hurt, and just toppled over the couch, landing on his back on the dusty floor.

Behind him, the chatter of automatic weapons fire came to a sudden stop. El lay still for a moment, panting for breath. 

Then he heard the man in black start to walk his way; broken glass from the TV screen crunched under the man’s boots. 

El rose to his feet and rested the shotgun on the back of the couch. He pulled the trigger.

Click. 

Out of ammo.

The man in black grinned. He raised his weapon.

Click.

Out of ammo.

El and the man stared at each other. El raised an eyebrow, mocking the soldier’s sudden panic. He had been in this situation so many times before, and it always came down to one thing: What to do now?

The soldier was standing right next to his dead comrades. He glanced down at them. At their guns.

The second the man sprang, El made his move. Using the wall behind him for leverage, he shoved the couch forward with all his strength. Pain bellowed through his arm and broken ribs. He shouted aloud, unable to help it.

The couch barreled forward, slewing to the right as it went. The soldier, who had been bending down to retrieve his dead partner’s weapon, looked up and saw it coming but couldn’t move out of the way in time. He was struck right between the eyes by the wooden arm of the couch. He went down without a sound.

The house was silent.

El pushed himself off the wall and hurried forward. He was festooned with dust bunnies, he noticed absently, from his sojourn on the floor behind the couch. His right arm screamed with pain, and it hurt to breathe.

The kitchen stank of blood and gunpowder. Two men were dead on the floor. A third was crumpled on the threshold of the ruined back door. Sands was sitting in the corner created where the counter met the cabinets beneath the kitchen sink. A pool of blood was slowly spreading beneath him. One hand was pressed to his thigh, and blood seeped through his fingers. “Guess what, El,” he said slowly, his voice tight with pain. “Looks like your sleepy little town isn’t as safe as you thought it was.”

El leaned heavily against the counter, fighting for breath. “There is one who is not dead.”

Sands smiled. It was not a nice smile. “You don’t say?”

****

El stayed in the kitchen. He could hear what was happening in his living room, and that was bad enough. He had no desire to see it.

Sands, it turned out, was skilled at the art of torture.

El never once heard him. The whole time Sands spoke softly, which somehow made it all the more chilling. He would have felt oddly better if Sands had shouted at the soldier sent by the CIA. Instead the only sounds he heard were the doomed man’s screams of pain.

While Sands was doing his version of the dirty work, El gathered up the bodies of the three dead men in his kitchen, and dumped them in the corner. One of the men’s eyes was still open, and a single blue iris stared at El accusingly.

He sat at the table, his head down. He had bound his injured arm as best he could, but the wound was high and he could not reach it well. His shirt was soaked with blood on his right sleeve and down his back. It hurt to breathe; he suspected a few of his ribs were broken.

A shot rang out in the living room. El’s head snapped up, and he groaned as the pain flared higher in his arm.

With a tired sigh, he stood up. He shuffled into the living room, picking up his feet as little as possible, so he would not jar his aching ribs. He stopped when he was only a few steps inside the room. He could see the lower half of the dead man’s body, but the rest was mercifully hidden behind the couch.

Sands was sitting on the piece of furniture that had seen so much action today. Blood coated his hands and stained the cushion under his leg. “Durango,” he said.

El blinked. “What?”

“Durango. That’s where they are. The CIA. They’ve made their headquarters in Durango while they hunt for us.”

“He told you that?”

“Yes.”

“And you believe him?”

Sands gave him another one of those ghoulish smiles. “Yeah.” Blood had splashed on one lens of his sunglasses. A streak of it was drying on his cheek. He had cinched his belt about his thigh, but the wound was still bleeding. He was pale and trembling. He looked utterly insane.

El nodded. “We’ll leave tonight.” He hesitated, then said, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Sands said brightly. “It’s been a while since I got to torture someone. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed it.”

El scowled. Once again Sands had done it -- reminded him that sanity was not at the top of the list of the man’s charms. 

“I didn’t mean that,” Sands said.

“Yes, you did,” El said. He felt dirty all over. Sometimes a man had to resort to ugly things like torture, but he had always hated it. To know that it had happened in his own living room disgusted him.

“Okay, so I did. Don’t get all righteous on me now.”

“No,” El sighed.

“Good.” Sands slumped back against the couch. “Give me a moment. I think I’m about to pass out for a little while. Wake me up when it’s time to go.”

El turned to go, then abruptly stopped. Those words. _Give me a moment._

He turned back around, his eyes wide. “That was you!” he said.

Sands lifted his head. “What?”

“In the church. That day. That was you, pretending to be a priest.”

“Well, goddamn, El, you finally figured it out. Good for you.” Sands leaned his head back on the couch again. “I really didn’t mean it, you know. But he made me do it. I had no choice. We had to have answers. You understand that.”

El still didn’t believe it, but he nodded all the same. Sometimes it was just easier to accept a lie than to keep insisting on the truth.

***********

Chapter 6: Sands Comes Up With A Plan

 

The sleepy town of Villa de Cos was rocked to the core by the violence that had occurred at El Mariachi’s house. Most of them had only heard stories about gunfights, and they had never seen anything like this before, except on TV. For nearly three weeks wild stories went through the town with rapid speed, passed from neighbor to neighbor. El Mariachi, they said, had killed six men and suffered not a scratch. And when he was done, he had walked right out the front door and gone after the ones who had sent the soldiers.

El knew all this because he was still in Villa de Cos, although only three other people knew that. One was Sands. The second was the doctor. The third was a man who had owed El a favor. This man had agreed to let El to stay at his house, and then he had left town in order to spread rumors of the mariachi’s presence, and create a false trail for the CIA to follow. 

Whatever the man had done, it had worked. There had been no sign of either soldiers or CIA agents in Villa de Cos for three whole weeks.

It was time to leave.

****

The sky in the west was ablaze with color. The first, bravest stars were already shining. Down the street, some children were playing a loud game involving a lot of running and shouting. It was a beautiful Wednesday in March.

El sat in the backyard of the house where he had been hiding for three weeks. A low stone wall ran the length of the yard, separating the grass from a flower garden. The stone was warm beneath his legs; the grass had grown high, and it covered the toes of his boots.

He took a satisfying drag of his cigarette, exhaling slowly, holding the smoke in his lungs as long as he could. He could do this without wincing now. His ribs were healed. His arm was healed. He was free from pain.

In fact, right at this moment, El Mariachi was content.

He could not remember the last time he had done this. Simply sat still, quietly, without talking, without moving, without any unnecessary thinking. Just...sitting.

Once he had known how to find stillness, without any effort on his part. A musician knew how to find the downbeats, the pauses, the rests. Once he had sat for hours under the sun with his friends, sometimes sharing stories and laughing, other times quiet and thoughtful.

Those days were long gone, but life, as El had come to realize, moved in cycles. Men might die, times might move on, but here he was, still sitting under the sun with a friend.

Sands was sitting on the grass, his back to the stone wall. One leg was stretched before him, the other was drawn up; his wrist rested on his bent knee, and a cigarette dangled from his fingers. His face was upturned, catching the last rays of sun. He was silent.

He had not said much at all, in fact, since they had left the death and destruction in El’s house. At first El had been suspicious of that silence. Then he had felt the first insidious tendrils of worry creeping in -- silence was very unlike Sands. Finally he had just accepted it. For whatever reason, Sands simply didn’t feel like talking these days.

He had talked at first, though, his words laced with bitter anger. He had been furious with El for bringing him to Villa de Cos. For lying about the safety of the town. The morning after their arrival at the house, he had knocked El out cold with a single punch. El had woken with a throbbing lump on his jaw to remind him of the consequences of fucking over a man like Sands.

The hell of it was, he blamed himself too. He had known full well the danger of returning. But he had done it anyway. He had stood there on the porch of Ramirez’s house and he had lied. No amount of rationalization, no pretty excuses, could justify what he had done.

El didn’t like guilt. He wore it badly. He took a final drag on the cigarette and stubbed it out on the stone next to him.

“We could go now,” he said.

Sands did not reply.

El knew the agent was angry with himself too. Sands had said nothing to indicate this was true, but El knew it anyway. Sands was pissed that he had believed El, even when he should have known better.

El himself thought it was very telling that Sands had believed the lie, but he had not said this out loud. He didn’t want another punch to the jaw.

He shifted his weight ever so slightly on the wall, so the edges of the stones didn’t dig into the backs of his thighs. He was ready to go. He was healthy again. He had clean clothes, his guitar, and the few possessions he could not bear to leave behind. He had his guns. As far as he was concerned, there was no reason to stay in Villa de Cos another day.

“We could go now,” he repeated, trying not to sound too eager.

Sands just sat there. He gave no sign that he had heard.

“To Durango?” he tried. The city was between Culiacan and the interior of the country, where they were now. El had to admit, as far as strategic locations went, it was a good choice. From there the CIA agents could have the soldiers fan out in their search, and look in all directions.

He hoped the man who owed him a favor was leading them far away, and that he was not putting himself in too much danger by doing so.

“Sands?” The man still had not moved.

“They’re not going to stop,” Sands said. 

El had to concede this was probably true.

“I won’t go back.”

El nodded. He understood. The one thing Sands feared – probably the only thing he feared – was losing his freedom. He would have feared it in the days of the Barillo cartel, but now that he was blind, he clung to his independence even more fiercely than before. It was all he had. If the CIA took that away, it would be worse than killing him.

To spend a life in captivity was not a fate El would wish on anyone. He himself would never stop fighting. He had told Carolina once that all he wanted was to be free, and he still believed that. Free to play his music, to sit under the sun and smoke. Free to live his life by his own rules, not someone else’s.

“Then we go to Durango,” he said. He slapped his hands on his thighs, eager to be on the road. 

“I have a plan,” Sands said. “Do you want to hear it?” 

El slumped a little. It was obvious they weren’t going to be leaving tonight. He nodded, remembered Sands couldn’t see him, and grunted his agreement.

“They won’t stop hunting me,” Sands said, “unless, they believe I am dead.”

“They will only believe that if they see a body,” El pointed out.

“Well, they’re not going to!” Sands snapped.

El smiled. Finally. For three weeks Sands had been morosely silent most of the time. Now it looked like the Sands of old was back.

“I said, I have a plan.” Sands took one final drag on his cigarette, then ground it out. “Are you going to listen, or are you going to interrupt?”

El waved a hand, ceding the floor. “Tell me your plan.”

“They have to believe I’m dead. The only way that will happen is if they see a body, like you said. Or, if they see me being fatally injured, and then someone tells them that I died.”

“You’re going to let them shoot you?”

“No.” Sands smiled, that scary smile that had no humor in it whatsoever. “You are.”

Taken aback, El could think nothing to say. This was not at all what he had expected. 

“Are you listening? We’re going to get in your car, drive to Durango, and we are going to find the CIA. We are going to let them surround us. You are then going to make an escape, in full view of every soldier and agent they have.”

“And you?” El asked.

“I will make myself right at home in their headquarters, the newest guest of the Central Intelligence Agency.” 

El couldn’t believe he had heard right. “You’re going to give yourself up to them?”

“Only for a little while,” Sands said. He spoke in that lazy drawl, the voice he used when he was excited about something. “Because you, El my dear friend, are going to rescue me. And you’re going to shoot me, so everyone can see. Oh, and you can shoot anyone else you like, while you’re at it.

“You will then take me – who will just so happen to be on death’s doorstep – out of the building. We will make our getaway. Later you can go back and report that I died. They will have seen me all shot up, so they will have every reason to believe you.”

El just stared at him. He had never in all his life heard a worse plan.

He didn’t even know where to begin. Setting aside the fact that Sands’ plan made no provisions for the search the CIA had mounted for himself, there were just too many ways things could go wrong. 

“Well?” Sands demanded. “Are we on?”

The sun had slipped behind the horizon now. The color in the sky was beginning to fade. “No,” El said. 

“No?”

“No,” he repeated. He shook his head, trying to put his thoughts in order. “Why would I shoot you if I’m trying to rescue you?”

“I don’t know!” Sands waved his hands about, making something up on the spot. “Some…weird…mariachi honor…thing…like you’d rather see me dead than in the hands of my enemies.” 

“That only works if you’re a mariachi,” El said dryly. 

“Oh for Christ’s sake! You’ll think of something, all right?”

El sighed. An awful lot of the responsibility in this scheme rested on his shoulders. Not only was he supposed to fight his way out from a group of armed men, he was then supposed to go back, retrieve Sands, and fight his way out yet again. This time with a wounded man to worry about. A wounded, blind man.

“I’m surprised you don’t want to just kill them all,” he said, half-hoping Sands would jump on this idea. The rest of him was appalled that he would even suggest such a terrible thing. 

“I do!” Sands said. He shook his head. “But I can’t. If I do that, there will be a whole fucking platoon of Marines down here next, and this country isn’t big enough to hide from them.” 

“It won’t work,” El said.

“Well then you think of something!” Sands shouted. “Because I am not going to spend one more day hiding from those fuckers.”

“You have to hide from the cartels,” El said reasonably. “How is this any different?”

“It just is,” Sands said irritably. The hand that had held his cigarette curled into a fist.

“You could always leave Mexico,” he offered.

“No. No. No. No fucking way. Barillo made me a citizen of this country when he took my eyes. Besides, I’m not running anymore, from anybody. Savvy?”

El shrugged. He had not expected Sands to agree. He had only said it to see how the man reacted. “It is too risky,” he said.

“Well, I’m waiting to hear your plan,” Sands said, his voice heavy with sarcasm. “Come on, talk. I’m all ears, El.”

He scowled. Thought about giving Sands a swift kick in the head. Of course he didn’t have a plan. How the hell was he supposed to have a plan? He hadn’t even known they needed a plan, until five minutes ago.

But Sands was right. The CIA would never stop hunting for their rogue agent who had gone insane down in Mexico, who needed to be brought in before he orchestrated even more chaos and disaster. What the CIA didn’t know was that Sands had no more interest in sowing chaos. All Sands cared about these days was the same thing El cared about.

_Libertad._

Freedom.

The CIA needed a reason to stop hunting Sands. Which meant they either had to believe he was no threat to them and their interests, or they had to believe he was dead.

Of the two, El thought proving the latter would be easier. Well, not easy exactly, but it would certainly be easier to do that than to make the CIA – or anyone, for that matter – believe that Sands was not dangerous. Even a single glance at the man told you all you needed to know. No one with any brains would ever mistake Sands for anything other than what he was: a killer.

“So,” he said. “They think you are dead, and they stop hunting for you. But they will still look for me.” 

“Yeah, probably, but you can handle yourself.” 

“So can you. You evaded them for six months.” 

“I can’t fucking see!” Sands cried. He slammed his fist down on the ground. “How am I supposed to stay ahead of an enemy I can’t even see?” There was a desperate, raw edge to his voice that El did not like. He had heard it once before, and he would never forget it.

But he understood the source of Sands’ desperation. He remembered what it had felt like to walk down the street with his eyes closed, the fear that had made his heart pound, the doubts that had made him question everything he did. For him, though, it had been easy to banish the fear. All he had had to do was open his eyes and see again. Sands would never have that option. 

And he remembered, too, what had happened in Puerto Vallarta, and he sighed. He had seen too much. He knew too much. He and Sands were bound together now, whether they liked it or not.

“What makes you think I can shoot you, and you will live?” he asked, trying to inject some sort of logic into the ridiculous scheme.

“You’re a gunfighter, El. You can do it.” 

“They will have you for at least a whole day. What will they do to you?” 

“Are you asking if they’ll torture me? I doubt it. I’m an American, and besides, the CIA prides itself on being able to get answers from its prisoners without resorting to such barbaric methods. If they do anything, they’ll use sodium pentothal. Most likely they’ll just try to talk me to death.” 

El remained silent, skeptical about this. Maybe that was how the Americans handled their prisoners, but that was not how it was done in Mexico.

Sands sighed. “Look, even if they do break out the thumbscrews, which isn’t going to happen, I’ll be fine. I mean, think about it. I had my eyes ripped from my skull by a doctor who probably got his medical license at the local butcher’s college. Do you really think there’s anything the CIA can do to hurt me?”

El had to admit this was a good point. Which left only one question. “What if I don’t come back for you?” 

Sands was silent for a long time. He dropped his head, and El could see a muscle in his jaw twitch. The hand that had dropped to the grass grabbed a fistful of the green blades, squeezing them tight. “You will,” he said. 

“I might not,” El said, keeping his voice light with an effort, as though he hadn’t made up his mind yet whether he was going to help. 

“You have to,” Sands said, very quietly. 

“No, I don’t,” El replied.

“You have to,” Sands repeated.

“Why?” El asked. 

The silence was deafening. Sands sat there, his head bowed. The last of the color drained from the sky. Overhead, a thousand stars sparked and shone. 

At last, so quietly he almost couldn’t hear, Sands said, “You have to come back because I trust you to.” 

El didn’t know whether to laugh or shout in astonishment. “You do?” 

“Yes!” Sands lifted his head, and El saw that he was furious at having been forced into this confession. “Are you happy you got to hear me say it? Yes, I trust you. But right now I’m about to fucking kill you. So tell me, are you with me, or are you not?” 

El thought about it for a long moment. There were an awful lot of holes in Sands’ plan, and if it went wrong, it would go horribly, terribly wrong. But he could not lie to himself. He was excited to give it a try. 

It was truly a terrible plan. But it was the only one they had. And if it worked, he would be free of the CIA’s clutches, too – he would see to that. 

They would both be free.

“I’m with you,” he said. 

***********

Chapter 7: El’s Gift to Sands

 

Now that they were on the road again, Sands’ good humor was restored. He was still pissed off, and still – annoyingly enough – scared, but these days that was about the best he could do. 

In other words, folks, it was back to the status quo.

They had waited for another whole day before leaving Villa de Cos, and then they had waited still further, until sundown. El had said it was safer that way. Fewer people would see them leaving, and if anyone was following them, it would be easier to tell. Unable to argue with this logic, Sands had been no less ticked about it. He hated making decisions and then being forced to wait to carry them out.

He was feeling much better now, however. They were just outside Durango. El had announced his intention of stopping at the first hotel he found, where they would stay the night. No one had followed them out here, which meant El’s little pal who had loaned them the house had made good on his word, and spread rumors of the mariachi’s appearance elsewhere in Mexico. The CIA, it seemed, had left Villa de Cos for good.

The car slowed. “Here,” El said.

They pulled into a parking lot. Sands stayed in the car while El went to go check in. Money was not an issue – apparently one of El’s mariachi buddies had given him a shitload of money after the coup, saying it was El’s fair share of the spoils.

Sands thought it was downright saintly of him to not mention that this money should have been his in the first place. After all, he had nearly died for that money. He had lost his eyes for that money. Still, he said nothing. That was one argument he knew he would lose, and he didn’t play to lose.

While he waited for El to come back, he rolled a cigarette. He was running out of tobacco, and he hoped he could buy more here. Tomorrow he would send El out to get some.

He heard the jangling sounds of El’s return, and he got out of the car. El went first to the trunk to remove their bags and the guitar case that went everywhere with them, then unlocked the door to the motel room. In the time this took, Sands had smoked half his cigarette.

They went inside. El shut and locked the door. They spoke little. Within twenty minutes of arriving at the motel, they were both asleep.

Or pretending to be.

****

In the morning, El went out.

Sands amused himself by turning on the TV and listening to the purple prose being spouted on a soap opera. He aimed his pistol at the screen and mouthed, “Bang,” killing the worst actress on the show a dozen times over. Then in the last act she took too many pills and fell into a coma. Everyone on the show ended up clustered about her bed, crying, except for one woman who seemed to be laughing. Sands guessed she was the one who had orchestrated the whole coma. He blew her a kiss, one conspirator to another, and put his gun away.

After that there was nothing interesting on. He turned the TV off and sat at the small wooden table in the front of the room. The morning sunshine had already made the table and the chair almost uncomfortably warm, but he didn’t care. El could come back at any moment, but Sands did not worry himself with that. He knew he would hear the sounds of El’s return, and have plenty of time to react long before the mariachi even set foot in the room.

He reached up and removed his sunglasses.

Warm sunlight bathed his face. A shuddery sigh escaped him. He could remember sunny days, a whole mass of them, but the sun in his memory was never as bright as it had been in reality. In his memory, it always seemed to be on the verge of raining; purple-black thunderheads glowered in the west, sending forked lightning down to the dusty earth. The storm was always there, always waiting to descend on him without warning.

He leaned forward, into the sun, yearning for it with all his being.

The doorknob rattled. El was back. Snarling curses, Sands grabbed the sunglasses and shoved them back on. 

The mariachi sounded loaded down. Paper bags crunched in his arms, and something thumped against his leg as he walked into the room. Sands sat where he was and made no offer to help.

El set something down on the table in front of him. It smelled good. He reached out a tentative finger and discovered a styrofoam box. He pushed open the lid and the aroma of eggs and greasy bacon wafted outward.

At the moment, however, Sands was not interested in food. He was more curious about the other packages El had. At least one of them was heavy, judging by the way the man was moving. He heard the bed springs squeak, and then El said, “I have something for you.”

He grinned. “Gosh, El, a present! And it isn’t even my birthday.”

He waited for the mariachi to ask just when his birthday was, but El only said, “If you want it, come here.”

“Oh, no.” He had stopped falling for _that_ trick when he was seven years old. “You can bring it over here.”

“I can’t,” El said in exasperation. “It’s too big.”

Sands smirked a little. “What did you get me? An elephant gun?”

El said nothing. The mariachi, he knew, was too busy having one of those if-looks-could-kill moments.

“All right, all right.” He reached into the styrofoam box and scooped out a piece of bacon. He stood up, munching on it slowly, taking his time. He knew he was driving El crazy, and he savored every moment.

When the bacon was gone, he licked his fingers, one by one. He thought of taking another piece, then decided that would be pushing things too far. He turned to the right and took three and a half paces, turned right again and took three more paces. Now he was standing near El, in front of the bed. “So, what do you have for me?”

“Here.” A hand took his.

Immediately he jerked his hand back. “I can do it myself!” he snapped.

El grunted in exasperation and seized his hand again. Sands seriously considered decking him, then gave in with a mental shrug; after all, it wasn’t like the mariachi was going to hurt him. He allowed El to guide his hand forward and down, to something resting on the bed.

His fingers brushed smooth wood. Wire strings. He explored the object, but by the time he had run his fingers over the curvature in the wood, he knew what it was.

A guitar.

He pulled his hand back as though he had been burned.

A guitar. El had brought him a guitar.

And not for the first time. El had given him a guitar once before.

In Puerto Vallarta.

A tremor ran through him. He had spent a year trying to forget that day, with moderate success, but now the memories caught up to him with a vengeance, clamoring at him to remember. _Look at us!_ they shouted gleefully. _We’re still here!_

He didn’t want to look.

But on this, like with so many other things, he had no choice. Helpless not to, Sands remembered.

*****

“I went to the market today,” El says. “I got something for you.”

They are living in a small house on the beach. El found it, and Sands used the last of his money to buy it. He is penniless now, although he refuses to tell El that. The U.S. government will have frozen his bank accounts by now. He needs to come up with a way to make money, and fast. The way he sees it, he can either sell drugs or sell his body, and neither option is very appealing.

For the time being, however, thoughts of living on the street as a beggar are pushed to the back of his mind. “What is it?”

“See for yourself,” El says.

The silence that follows this remark is a heavy one. Sands debates shooting El in the gut for it, but then he realizes the mariachi genuinely meant no offense. El, quite simply, forgot for the moment that he was talking to a blind man.

On second thought, he takes El’s response as a compliment. If someone like El Mariachi can forget he is blind, maybe he’s doing better than he thought at fooling them all.

Feeling light-hearted and not a little proud of himself, he crosses the room, moving with easy confidence. He already knows its layout and dimensions by heart; he has not stumbled or bumped into anything in four days.

El has set his mystery gift on the dining room table. Sands walks up to him. “What is it?”

He reaches out and finds the object. It is made of wood, but as his fingers explore further, he finds the strings, the narrow neck with its metal frets.

It’s a guitar.

El has given him a guitar. 

Abruptly the day darkens. The stormclouds in his head slam together, and he hears thunder. Hatred rocks him to the core.

El has given him a guitar.

“What the fuck is this?” he demands, nearly choking on rage and grief. El has given him a fucking guitar, and he is blind.

 _This is what happens_ , the voice in his mind says snidely. _This is what you get for letting someone close. You see what happens?_

_You see?_

“I can’t fucking see!” he shouts. He grabs the guitar by the neck and brings it down on the table with one swift swing. It makes an indignant twang, but it does not break. He is so pissed off by this – how dare it not break! -- that he dashes it against the table again, harder. This time the neck snaps off, so it is only held to the body by the strings. He brings it down again, and the body shatters. 

He lets the pieces fall to the floor. “This’s a real funny joke, El. Fuck you!” 

He swings at the mariachi, wanting to bash El’s face in. He cannot remember the last time he was this enraged. Anger is dangerous for someone like him. It’s harder to stay in control when he is angry, harder to remember that most days he is only one step away from an asylum.

Sands doesn’t care anymore.

He is standing so close to the mariachi, there is no way he should miss. But he does. His fist encounters only thin air, and he staggers slightly from the follow-through. “Where are you?” he shouts, hating that he can’t see his enemy, hating El, hating himself. “Where the fuck are you?”

“I’m right here,” El says. The mariachi’s voice comes from behind him. Sands spins around and lashes out again, and for a second time, his fist meets only empty air.

This time, however, he hears the jingling sound as El moves away. He doesn’t give El the chance to laugh at him. He simply guesses where the man is standing, and swings again.

Nothing. El ducks and backs away, stepping on the wooden splinters of the guitar and crushing them underfoot. 

The guitar. Thinking of it fills Sands with rage. “Great present, El. I’d love to see what you buy a deaf man. Oh wait, _I can’t see!_ ” He throws himself in the direction he believes El to be in.

And gets an armful of nothing. He stumbles on the carpet and falls to his knees. He doesn’t get up. Why bother? He will only humiliate himself further if he does. 

He is beyond caring. “You fucker,” he says dully. “I saved your life.”

“I know,” El says. “That is why I am doing this.” His voice is always changing location. He is walking in circles, Sands realizes, his hands covering the chains on his clothing so they will not chime and give him away.

At first he tries to follow the sounds, but El keeps moving, always walking, turning, changing position so fast he can’t keep up. It’s too new to him, trying to make sense of his world with sound alone as his navigator. He kneels there, almost shaking with anger, and something else he can’t name. “What are you doing? Stop it.”

El says nothing. Just keeps moving, always moving, taunting him with sound.

“Stop it!” he shouts. “Fucking stop it!”

“Why?” El says. He moves again, and now the mariachi’s voice comes from right behind him, over his left shoulder, tormenting him with its closeness. “Why should I?”

“Because I can’t see!” Sands screams, and launches himself at El Mariachi.

He misses, of course. He lands flat on his face on the floor.

Deep inside Sands, something snaps. For months now he has thought only of survival, of hunting down Escalante and the cartel. Of beating the odds and besting everyone who laughs at him or looks at him funny or who even notices he is there. Staying ahead of the game. Keeping away from the grabbing hands and tripping obstacles of the world. He has been so busy trying to convince everyone, including himself, that he isn’t blind, that he has never really allowed it to sink in. 

Until now. It has only taken four months, but the awful truth finally hits him.

“Oh God,” he moans, still on the floor. “Oh God, I can’t see. I can’t see.” 

He goes limp, presses his face against the floor. The hated sunglasses dig into his cheeks, his brow. He doesn’t care. 

He cannot remember the last time he cried, and now, now when he wants to cry more than anything, he can’t. He has no eyes. He will never cry again.

The irony does not escape him.

He is blind. He is never going to see again. He wants to hook his fingers into the empty holes where his eyes once were. He wants to tear and gouge and rip away the scar tissue, dig right into his skull, until he bleeds, bleeds to death, just so he doesn’t have to live in this nightmare any more.

He wants to wake up.

A horrible wail emerges from his throat, and part of him is appalled by the sound, the sound a wild animal trapped in a cage might make. He cradles his head on his arms and sobs pitifully, terrible, tearless sobs, forcing them out past the pain in his chest. 

_Oh El_ , he thinks distantly, _just put a bullet in me now. Please._

But El does not shoot him, and Sands eventually sobs himself into unconsciousness.

When he wakes, it is evening. Crickets sing outside the window, and the room is much cooler. Outside, waves crash on the beach; the tide is coming in.

“I hate you,” he says. He is lying on the couch, fully clothed. El has taken his boots off, but has not touched his guns.

“I know,” El says. “But you feel better, no?”

He wants to smash El in the face. Because the annoying thing is, El is right. He feels utterly spent, drained of all emotion. But he also feels cleaner, somehow. Like he has sicked up something black and hairy, something that has been curled up inside him for a long time, poisoning him from within.

“El Mariachi,” he sighs bitterly. “Mexico’s premiere psychologist. Don’t you ever do that to me again.”

“I won’t have to,” El says.

Sands says nothing. Half an hour later he has fallen asleep, and it is the first sleep he has had in weeks where he does not dream of sharp metal and laughter. 

Before falling asleep, however, he swears a vow to himself. He will never forgive El for making him break down like that.

The very next day, El leaves Puerto Vallarta. 

****

And now, another guitar.

“Are you trying to be funny?” he asked. He balled his hands into fists so El would not see them trembling.

“No,” El said. “I thought you might want it.”

He kept his tone light, praying his voice wouldn’t reveal the pounding of his heart. “And what made you think that?”

“Well,” El said with studied casualness, “if you are to teach me how to play with the slide, you will need a guitar of your own.”

Sands just stood there. He supposed it was possible that El had suddenly developed a sense of humor, even this late in the game, but he was still suspicious of the mariachi’s motives. There was no way El had forgotten what had happened in Puerto Vallarta. And if the man even attempted to talk about it now, Sands was going to beat him to death with this new guitar.

The chains on El’s pants jingled as he walked off and sat at the sunlit table. Styrofoam squealed as he opened the box containing his own breakfast. “If that is how you feel, I will take it back tomorrow.”

“Don’t,” Sands said, before his brain could stop his mouth.

“You want to keep it?”

Shit. He winced. He hadn’t meant to say that. Well, it was too late now. “Sure,” he said, giving a shrug, acting he didn’t care, even though everything inside him was screaming. 

He refused to touch it now, when El might be watching, but he remembered the way the instrument had felt under his fingers. Once upon a time, he had played the guitar. Once upon a time, he had even been good at it. Maybe he could learn to play again. Hell, it would give him something to do during the long, dark, empty days.

“Yeah,” he said. “I want to keep it.”

************ 

Chapter 8: El Makes Confession 

 

After El had eaten his breakfast – and most of Sands’ – he said, “I know where the CIA is staying.” 

Sands was sitting at the table with him. He had rolled a cigarette with the tobacco El had brought him, but he was not smoking it. The guitar was still on the bed, apparently forgotten. He had been moodily facing the window, but when El spoke up, his head snapped around. “You waited an hour to tell me this? What the hell is the matter with you?” 

El shrugged, and finished the last of the eggs. “I was hungry.” 

“Oh, Jesus,” Sands sighed in disgust. “So, what did you see? What’s the place like?” 

El described it carefully, in as much detail as he could remember. A lot could depend on Sands’ ability to maneuver his way through the place on his own, and for that he would need to know what it looked like.

While he talked, he watched Sands carefully. Ever since he had forced the man to come with him on his quest to destroy Barillo’s cartel, he had felt a sense of responsibility for Sands. God knew why -- it wasn’t like anybody had _made_ him feel that way. He couldn’t explain it, either. It was just something he had felt, without reason.

But since Sands’ admission of trust, El had felt that responsibility much more keenly. Sands needed him, and not just as a pair of eyes. The former CIA agent would have died before admitting it, but Sands was lonely. Madness made for a poor companion. He needed someone.

El too was lonely. There had been no one for him since Carolina’s death. He was tired of being alone, of living his life of danger with no one there to share the quiet times. He needed someone.

And so, somehow, the amazing had happened. They were friends now, something El would never have thought possible just a year ago.

He trusted Sands with his life. With his secrets, his innermost thoughts. He had never cried in front of another man before. He had told Sands things he had never told anyone else, things he would never have dared to admit to Fideo, or Lorenzo.

And he knew Sands had done the same. The night they had sat there, drunk and full of self-pity, Sands had told him things no one else would ever hear. The fact that El could not remember what those things were did not diminish the trust that had been extended that night. And no matter how badly he had needed the emotional release, Sands would never have broken down in front of him in Puerto Vallarta, had there not been some measure of trust present, even that long ago.

It was because of that trust that he meant to do whatever it took to get the CIA off their backs. He had no intention of letting the U.S. government lay so much as a finger on him. He had lived all his life in Mexico. He would never leave. Nor would he allow anyone else -- especially agents of another country -- to dictate how he lived. 

And he was going to do whatever it took to accomplish this.

Sands was nodding, an exasperated look on his face. He held up a hand. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re starting to repeat yourself. I got it.”

The CIA had made their headquarters at an old ranch situated a few miles outside the city. Two U.S. soldiers had stationed just outside the gate, but El knew there were plenty of others there as well. After all, he and Sands had killed six of them in Villa de Cos. 

From what he could tell, it had looked like the soldiers were staying in the old stables, while the CIA agents themselves -- however many there might be – were living in the house. El had driven by twice, each time slowing down to stare. The soldiers at the gate had stared back at him impassively.

The entire ranch was spread out over several acres of hilly land. El had been glad to see this. If he was supposed to let the soldiers see him, and then run, he had to have somewhere to lay low while making his escape. The hills promised to provide the protection he needed, so that was one thing to be grateful for.

“Tell me,” El said, “who we are facing. Who is in that house?”

Sands pursed his lips and sighed through his nose. “Took you long enough to ask me that,” he said sourly.

“You know who it is,” El pressed. He had suspected as much, given Sands’ reticence to mention the actual people hunting them. He knew Sands had tortured the information out of the soldier in his house, but so far he had learned nothing other than the name Durango.

It was time to lay all the cards on the table. El gave his new friend a hard glare. “Tell me.”

Sands looked like he would rather have undergone dentistry without anesthesia than say anything. But he did answer the question. “It’s my supervising officer,” he said, each word short and brittle.

El nodded. This made sense. After all, no matter how much the government in Washington might have wanted to forget all about their agent with questionable sanity down in Mexico, someone would have had to be here, keeping an eye on Sands.

“What is his name?”

“ _Her_ name is Belinda Harrison. Everyone but me always just called her Bel.”

A woman! This took El by surprise. And it explained Sands’ deep reluctance to talk about her. No wonder the man was so pissed. It had to rankle that the person in charge of bringing him in was a woman. “What did you call her?”

Sands smirked. “I called her, ‘That Bitch.’”

El shook his head. “Did you ever meet anyone you liked?”

Sands thought about this for a while. “No,” he finally said. 

El couldn’t help smiling. Sands was insane, all right, but no one could say he wasn’t entertaining.

“She was my liaison to the States,” Sands said. “She’s the Station Chief for all agents in Mexico -- which meant me and one other person, I think. I never knew for sure. Security reasons and all that. Anyway, she works in the embassy in Mexico City, supposedly just a clerk. No one there knows what she really does, of course. I had a dedicated phone line to her, and I checked in with her every few days.”

“Did she know about the coup?” El asked. He found it hard to believe the U.S. government would have sanctioned Sands’ madness.

“No.” Sands hesitated, then said, “I did call her, though. I told her Cucuy had talked to the cartel and ratted me out. I told her they were following me. I tried to make her think I was in danger.” A hard, humorless laugh escaped him. “Of course, I really was in danger. I just had no clue how much.

“Do you know what I told her? I said, I said, ‘This is no time to screw the pooch. This is the big dance number.’ And she hung up on me.”

This Belinda Harrison, El decided, was not a very smart woman.

“I called her once more, told her I needed a new phone line, that the first one had been compromised. She finally seemed to get it, that things were serious. She agreed to meet me.” Sands stopped. A muscle in his jaw twitched. “That was when the dear Ajedrez sat down across from me in the cantina. I knew it was all over with then. I hung up on Harrison and I never spoke to her again.”

“Did she try to find you?” El asked.

“Hell if I know. Probably. But knowing her, she didn’t look too hard. She never liked me,” Sands said with an unsurprising lack of emotion.

 _I wonder why_ , El thought, and wisely decided to keep silent.

“I did try to call her again…after. In the taxi. I figured I would find somewhere to hide, and they could pick me up, take me in.” He paused, then said, “I was hopped up on the cartel’s drugs then. Plus I had the fucking kid to worry about. I wasn’t thinking straight.”

El believed this. He knew Sands would never go willingly back to the CIA now, and that it had only been fear and pain that had made him try to call them on the day of the coup. He would have gone quietly that day, but that had been over a year ago. Things had changed since then. 

Many things.

“Anyway, she had already cut the line. The call didn’t go through.” Sands shrugged, easily dismissing what had to have been a terrible moment for him, the moment when he had realized he was on his own. “I never expected to see her again. Funny how the world works, isn’t it?”

El bit his lip, and waited.

Sands did not disappoint. “And by ‘see her again’, I mean figuratively, of course. But then, you already knew that,” he drawled.

El let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. Ever since walking back into the motel room with the guitar in his hand, he had been on edge. Even now, he kept waiting for Sands to explode. He found it hard to believe he had gotten away with it. He had been taking a big chance, bringing that guitar in here, but he had wanted to know what would happen.

He wondered how often Sands thought of Puerto Vallarta. He wondered if Sands had any idea how awful that day had been for himself. It had not been easy to bait the man into a breakdown, but it had been even worse to stand there and just watch it happen.

It was Carolina who had made him see that such things were necessary. She had asked him questions about his past, brushing aside his attempts to evade the truth, until finally he had demanded to know what the hell she was doing. Why did she want to know such awful things?

A person can’t keep pain like that inside, she had told him. It has to come out, eventually. And if you weren’t careful, it would come out when you least expected it, in ways you never imagined.

She had made him talk, and it had been terrible, just as he had expected it would be. He had cried, he had shouted with rage, he had almost struck her. She had let him pace and punch the wall, and when his anger was spent, she had opened her arms and held him. And he had felt better. He had been ashamed of himself, a little, and guilty for putting her through that, but he had been able to look at the past without so much pain. He had felt cleaner inside.

It was one of the many reasons he loved her. She had always known what he had needed, even when he had not known it himself.

In Puerto Vallarta, he had dreamed of her, as always. One morning he had woken up, and instead of grieving for her all over again, he had heard her voice still echoing in his head, reminding him of the price paid for keeping pain locked inside for too long. So he had made his plans. He had gone to the market and he had bought the guitar, and when he came back he had said, _See for yourself_ , knowing full well how cruel it was. 

And it had worked.

The amazing thing was that Sands had not killed him for it. He had walked out of the house the next day and driven off, fully aware that he was lucky to be alive. Not many people in this world could do something like what he had done to Sands, and live to talk about it. He suspected he might be the only one, in fact.

He cleared his throat. It was time to start thinking about the future, not the past. And there would be no future for him unless he got rid of the CIA threat first. 

“Will she be alone?” he asked. “How many agents will be with her?”

“One, maybe two,” Sands said. “A junior agent, someone new to the field. His first assignment. Something like that. The rest will be soldiers. They’ll be bored and probably they’ll hate her.” He smirked. “She’s not a very nice person. She doesn’t make it easy for the men under her command.”

A sudden frown drew his brows together. “You know something? I just realized, this is all her fault. If she hadn’t been such a bitch, I wouldn’t have fallen for Ajedrez’s line of bullshit. But That Bitch has a way of making a man feel like less of a man. So when dear old Ajedrez came along, with her dirty talk and her sweet mouth, telling me how much she wanted me, it was a lot easier to believe she meant it.”

Sands dropped his head and chuckled bitterly. “Jesus Christ, El. Why did you ever get married? All women do is fuck us over. We’re better off without them.”

El stood up. He had heard all he needed to hear. “Then let’s go.”

Sands tossed his unlit cigarette to the table. “Let’s do it.”

****

First they armed themselves. El wished aloud for a Kevlar vest, so he could shoot Sands without doing any real damage, and Sands laughed so hard he couldn’t stand up straight. “You really know how to lighten a situation, don’t you, El?”

This pissed El off. He hadn’t said it to be funny.

The road leading out to the ranch was not well-traveled. They were the only vehicle around for miles. El rolled his window down all the way to feel the wind on his face. He was nervous, tense, excited, scared. His stomach was cramping; his heart was pounding. When the wind blew his hair back into his face, he pushed it away irritably.

He took a deep breath and held it for a count of five. He let it out slowly. “I feel like I should say something,” he offered. 

“Like what?” Sands asked, having no idea what he meant.

“Something...inspirational,” he said. 

“What the hell?” Sands sounded alarmed. 

“Not like that,” El said impatiently. He wasn’t about to start hugging or getting sentimental. “Something about what we are going to do. Something like...” He cast about in his mind, searching for words to convey the meaning he wanted. “Something like, one for all and all for one.” 

“Okay.” Sands nodded, getting it now. “That wasn’t bad. But I’ve got a better one. Take what you can, and give nothing back.” 

“I like that,” El said. He repeated it to himself. The words definitely fit their situation. “Where did you hear that?” 

Sands shrugged. “I don’t remember. Some stupid movie.”

It didn’t really matter who had said it first. What mattered was that they had just acknowledged the importance of what they were about to do. In their own strange, shorthand manner, they had just said everything that needed to be said.

Then he frowned. No, not everything. They could both be dead in an hour. He had to say this last bit, the one thing that still needed saying.

“I want to tell you,” he said, “you are the truest friend I have had in a long time.”

Sands did not react to this for a long moment. For the millionth time El found himself cursing those dark sunglasses, and the fact that he could not look in Sands’ eyes to know what the man was really thinking. 

Finally, when they were nearly at the ranch, Sands spoke. “Well I’ve never had any friends. Congratulations, El. You’re the first. I guess that means I win.” 

“You always have to do that, don’t you?” El asked irritably. 

“Do what?” 

“Win.” 

“There’s not much point in playing,” Sands drawled with a smirk, “if you don’t play to win.” Then he sat up a little, and the amusement vanished from his face. “I want you to know, though, I still hate you for what you did to me in Puerto Vallarta.” 

“I know,” El said. 

“Good.”

“I have one more thing to tell you,” El said.

“Christ! What is it now?” Sands snapped.

“We’re here,” El said.

************

Chapter 9: A Change in Plan

 

El stopped the car when they were still out of sight of the ranch. He had an idea that he would need the vehicle to make his escape, and he didn’t want the soldiers to see it. He got out of the car and swung the door closed, but did not latch it. Again, he was thinking in terms of making a swift getaway. 

They walked toward the ranch, Sands on his right, matching him step for step. The former CIA agent looked as tense as El felt. 

It was like the Escalante cartel all over again, he thought. Stalking through the halls of the hacienda, preparing to deal out death. “I still say this is a bad idea,” he said. 

“If you say that again I’m going to pop you in the nose,” Sands said irritably. “You had plenty of chances to come up with a better plan. It’s too late now. Monty says you’re stuck with what’s behind door number two.” 

Like many of the American clichés Sands used, El had only the vaguest idea what this meant. He decided to ignore it. 

They were coming up on the ranch. The road curved gently here, and just beyond the curve was the gate with the two soldiers. Without even being aware that he was doing it, El slowed his pace. 

He couldn’t go through with it. This plan was suicidal. He was never going to be able to escape from a group of soldiers and CIA agents. He had been insane himself to agree to this.

He needed an idea. Fast. 

And then, just like that, the idea he was looking for was there. Beautifully formed in his mind, all ready to go. A way to get Sands inside without exposing himself to any danger. A selfish plan, to be sure, but a far better one than Sands’ scheme.

He reached out and grabbed Sands’ left arm. “Stop.” 

And Sands, because he trusted El now, stopped walking. “What?” 

_I’m sorry_ , El thought. 

He punched Sands right in the face. 

Sands never had a chance to defend himself. His head snapped back and he reeled backward. Before he could tear his arm free, and strike back, El hit him again. 

Sands went sprawling in the dust. He raised his fists, but when he did not hear El approach, he stayed where he was. “What the fuck was that for?” he demanded. He sounded pissed, but mostly he just sounded bewildered. 

“It’s part of my plan,” El said. 

“Your plan? Oh my Christ.” Sands got to his feet. El tensed, half-expecting the man to attack him, but Sands stayed still. “Fine,” he snapped, spreading his hands in a curt gesture. “Tell me your plan, O Clever One.” 

“The CIA knows who you are,” El said. “They don’t know who I am.” 

“They know who you are,” Sands said. He touched his fingers to his bleeding lip. “Believe me, they know who you are.” 

“But they do not know what I look like,” El said. 

Sands opened his mouth to retort, then shut it. He frowned. “Are you sure?” He spat blood into the dirt.

“How could they?” El said. “All they have is a description of me -- a man with dark hair and dark eyes, who plays guitar. Every man in Mexico fits that description.”

“Your jacket,” Sands said. “I don’t think every man in Mexico wears a jacket with a scorpion on the back.”

“I’ll leave it in the car,” El said. Part of him was amazed that Sands remembered something as insignificant as the design on his jacket. They had, after all, only met face to face twice before the coup. But Sands was CIA, trained to gather as much information as possible in a short time. When he remembered that, he supposed he shouldn’t be surprised.

He wondered what else Sands knew about him.

“Your hand,” Sands said. 

Involuntarily El curled his left hand into a fist. It was true, the scar on his hand would always give him away, but the bracer he wore over his palm hid the mark. No one would see it. 

“We go there,” he said. “I turn you in. For the reward. I come back later for the money, and that’s when I break you out.” He paused long enough for Sands to absorb this, then added, “Savvy?” 

Sands made a face. “Don’t ever say that again,” he said absently. 

El waited while Sands considered the new plan. Every nerve in his body felt strung too tight. He didn’t know what he would do if Sands refused to play along. He prayed he wouldn’t have to find out.

At last the former CIA agent nodded. “All right, all right. You already bashed me in the face, so I guess we’re going with your idea.” He unbuckled his gunbelts and held them out. “ _Do not_ let anything happen to these.” 

El took them, nodding his consent. He knew Sands had taken the gunbelts off the first man he had killed after being blinded, and that they were a source of pride to his friend. “I’ll keep them for you,” he said. 

“You better,” Sands said. “So, we better get our stories straight. How did you catch me? And where?”

This made El pause. He had not thought of that. He raised one shoulder in a shrug. “Uhh.” 

Sands shook his head, and El got the impression of one of those non-existent eye rolls. “And you’re supposed to be a big bad bounty hunter. Christ, El, how do you get out of bed in the morning without someone there to tell you how to do it?”

A bounty hunter. _Madre de Dios_. His plan, El began to realize, had as many holes in it as Sands’ did. It was just as crazy. The only difference was, his plan was only putting one life in danger. 

He stalked back toward the car. He opened the passenger side door and threw Sands’ gunbelts inside, then took off his jacket and tossed that in as well. He leaned in and rummaged around in the glove department for a while before he found what he wanted. Then he went back the way he had come, glowering at the sight of the smirk on Sands’ face. He was getting awfully sick and tired of all these insults slung his way at the expense of his intelligence.

“I thought you were bailing on me,” Sands said. 

“Not a chance,” El grunted. He grabbed Sands’ hands and swiftly bound the man’s wrists with the spare guitar string. 

The wire was stiff, and didn’t want to bend. Sands jerked back with a hiss. “What the fuck are you doing?” His voice rose with every word, heading swiftly towards panic.

“Big bad bounty hunter, remember?” El asked. He twisted the ends of the string and made a knot, frustration and nervous tension making him jerk it a little tighter than he normally would have.

Sands flinched, but did not say anything. The seriousness of what they were doing finally seemed to be sinking in. 

“Let’s go,” El said. He took hold of Sands’ elbow and started walking.

“Wait.” Sands resisted, pulling back. “I need--”

El kept going, half-dragging Sands along behind him. “We’re doing this my way now,” he said.

“I never agreed to this!” Sands cried. “Let go of me!” He dug his heels in, refusing to take another step.

El stopped walking. Beneath his hand, he could feel Sands trembling. He suddenly realized that Sands had to be terrified. Unable to see, his hands bound, he was completely helpless and under someone else’s control. For a man who valued personal freedom above all else, it had to be one of the worst moments in his life.

“Keep your voice down. We’re almost there,” he said. He wanted to say more, but he couldn’t let himself. He could not give in to his sympathy for Sands. Now was not the time to go soft.

Yet even a pause as short as this one had been long enough. Sands took a deep breath, his poise regained. There was only the faintest hint of a tremor in his voice when he said, “I must say, El, when you put your mind to something, you don’t fuck around.”

“That is why I am still alive,” El said. He started walking again.

They followed the road as it curved around on its way to the ranch. When the gate and the soldiers came into view, El muttered this fact to Sands. When they snapped to attention, he passed this on. But when they shouted out for him to halt, he went silent. From here on out, Sands would not need him to describe anything. 

“What’s going on?” demanded one of the soldiers.

“I have the American spy you are looking for,” El said, deliberately thickening his accent so it was almost impossible to understand him. “I have come for the reward.” 

The two soldiers exchanged a skeptical glance. “Take me to see your commander,” El demanded. “I must speak to him.” 

The soldiers looked at each other again. “We’ll take him from here,” one of them said. 

“No!” El pulled back on Sands’ arm, making the agent stumble. “He is my catch. I want to speak to your commander, and receive my reward.” 

The first soldier pulled his radio and spoke into it. A female voice answered it. Sands twitched, but El remained impassive. He was kicking himself for speaking in English. He should have spoken Spanish and let them think he didn’t understand what they were saying. 

Oh well. It was too late now. 

“Step over here,” said the soldier with the radio. The other one raised his rifle and aimed it at El’s head. 

El did as he was told. He stood there, unmoving, while the soldier frisked him thoroughly, even passing a hand between his legs. He just gritted his teeth and told himself he would be sure to kill this man when he came back to get Sands. 

“All right.” The soldier with the radio flicked his head tersely toward the ranch house. The second man opened the gate. “You can go on in. Slowly. We’ll be watching you.” 

El took hold of Sands’ arm again and began walking up the driveway. Halfway up, the driveway forked. The left path led to the front of the house, and the right went on for a bit before ending at a detached garage about one hundred yards back. The doors of the garage were open, and El could see at least two cars parked inside. Behind this building were the former stables, where the soldiers were staying.

As they neared the house, four people stepped out of the front door. The first two were obviously the junior CIA agents Sands had spoken of. They wore jeans and button-down shirts, and carried pistols in holsters at their hips. One was tall and blond, and the other was short and dark. 

The third was a soldier in fatigues like his comrades at the gate. He carried an automatic rifle. 

The fourth was a woman. She had short blond hair, and she was pretty. She wore jean shorts over her stocky legs, and a white denim shirt that showcased her ample chest. She was unarmed. 

Moving his mouth as little as possible, El reported all this to Sands. The agent nodded his understanding, but said nothing. 

They walked forward a little further, then El judged he had gone far enough. He stopped abruptly, giving Sands’ elbow a hard yank to bring the man up short. Sands stumbled again, and cursed under his breath. 

“Who are you?” asked the woman. She spoke with a bland American accent. She was probably from California, El thought.

“My name is not important,” he said. “I have brought you the spy you wanted.” 

Belinda Harrison smiled. It was a thin, chilling smile. “So I see. Hello, Sheldon.” 

Sands made an abortive movement forward, as though he would like nothing better than to kill her. “I told you never to call me that.” 

“Oh that’s right,” she said, laughter in her voice. “I had forgotten.” Her amusement died. She gestured to the soldier. “Take him.” 

El jerked Sands backward. “I want my reward.” 

“And you’ll have it,” Harrison promised. “Now hand him over.” 

Sands muttered something that El didn’t catch. To cover what he was doing, he pulled the agent closer to him, as though he was reluctant to release his prize. “First, show me the reward.” 

“Barillo,” Sands whispered. “Get her to say Barillo’s name.” 

El’s mind went blank. How was he supposed to do that? 

Belinda Harrison was fast losing her patience. The two men on either side of her were tense with anticipation. The soldier looked bored. 

“Sir, if you wish to live, then you will do as I tell you,” she said.

“What if I demand more money?” With his free hand El grabbed Sands’ hair and shook the agent’s head like a rag doll, ignoring Sands’ furious muttered threats involving the loss of his manhood. “He is worth a lot more to the cartels than he is to you. I could find some of Armando--” 

He hesitated slightly, hoping she would take the bait, ready to keep talking if she did not.

She did. 

“Armando Barillo is dead,” Harrison said. “So is Ramon Escalante. The cartel is destroyed. There is--” 

“Barillo?” Sands suddenly came to life. He turned his head as though to find the person who had spoken the name. “Barillo?” 

El let go of his hair, wondering what his friend had in mind. 

“Barillo,” Sands whispered. He took a step forward. El let him. He suddenly had an idea what was going to happen, and while he applauded Sands’ brilliance, he did not want to be nearby when it went off. 

Sands doubled over, pressing his bound hands to his face. “Barillo,” he moaned loudly. “Oh God. Barillo!” 

Belinda Harrison frowned. “What’s the matter with him?” 

El looked at her and shrugged. “Esta loco,” he said, and twirled his finger by his ear. 

Sands suddenly straightened up. “I can’t see!” he screamed, and launched himself at El. 

Not expecting this, El staggered back as the man’s weight struck him. Sands seized his collar, twisting, turning him around. “At her,” Sands hissed in his ear, then threw back his head and screamed again. “I can’t see! Barillo! Oh God, I can’t see!” 

El let Sands propel him backward, toward Belinda Harrison. The two men with her took a large step back, their eyes wide with horror. 

The soldier did not look bored now. 

When only a few steps separated them from Belinda Harrison, El grabbed Sands and spun around. “Get off me!” he shouted. “You’re crazy!” He pushed Sands away from him, and the agent stumbled backward, ever closer to his target. 

“Get him!” Harrison ordered, gesturing to the soldier. 

Upon hearing her speak, Sands suddenly went still. He cocked his head. “I know that voice,” he said, sounding completely normal. He turned toward Harrison. 

The soldier, who had begun to approach Sands, stopped, waiting to see what would happen next. 

“I know you,” Sands said. He smiled, and held out his bound hands. “It’s you.”

El began to back away.

Belinda Harrison smiled tentatively, the type of smile reserved for the elderly and senile. “It’s me,” she said. 

“You did this to me!” Sands shouted. “You’re Barillo’s daughter!” He ran at her. “I’m going to fucking kill you!” He collided with her, and they both went down in the dust.

El began moving a little faster. 

The two junior CIA agents were frozen to the spot, although the taller of the two had the sense to draw his gun. The soldier dashed forward. The two soldiers at the gate abandoned their posts and began running for the house. Others heard the shouting in the front yard and emerged from the garage and the stables; every single one of them was armed.

Sands and Belinda Harrison wrestled on the ground. He had his hands about her throat and was screaming as he choked her. El couldn’t be sure, but he thought that part of it wasn’t fake. 

She would have done all right on her own, though, he saw. She was obviously well-trained. She had just begun to throw Sands off her when the soldier with the rifle arrived on the scene. He slammed the stock of the weapon down on Sands’ head, and the agent slumped forward. 

Harrison rolled out from under him, her hands at her throat. 

“Jesus!” one of the junior agents said. 

Sands was not out, not yet. He tried to get up, snarling something at Harrison that El couldn’t hear. 

The soldier brought the rifle down again. Sands collapsed. 

Harrison grabbed the gun from the soldier. “Do that again, and it’ll be your skull on the receiving end,” she snapped. She looked up and saw El edging away. “You still want your reward?” she asked snidely. Her throat was already beginning to bruise, and her voice was hoarse. 

“I will come back for it,” El said, trying to sound like a man who had decided discretion was the better part of valor. “Tomorrow.” 

“Fine, fine.” She waved her hand at him, dismissing him. She turned away, her attention on Sands once more. 

The former agent was lying face down in the dust. She put the toe of her hiking boot under his shoulder and rolled him over. She hunkered down beside him. 

El knew what she meant to do, and he clenched his jaw. In all the time he had spent with Sands, he had not once been tempted to do what she was about to do. It seemed like a violation, something that Sands would have never have allowed had he been conscious. 

Belinda Harrison removed Sands’ sunglasses. The two junior agents made revolted noises and turned aside – although one of them, the taller of the two, looked back again almost right away, fascinated by the sight before him. 

The soldier made a disgusted face and looked away. 

Harrison stared at Sands for a long moment. Her face revealed nothing of what she was thinking. She cocked her head to one side. “You want to hear something scary?” she said. “I used to think he was cute.” She stood up and tossed the sunglasses at Sands; they landed on his chest. 

She started for the house. Over her shoulder she said, “Bring him in.” 

That was El’s cue to go. He began walking quickly toward the open gate. 

They had done it. Sands was inside, and he was free. There had been no shooting, and no one – well, almost no one – had gotten hurt. 

Things weren’t looking too bad, El mused. He walked out through the gate and turned left, heading back up the road toward the car. 

After all, it could have been much worse. 

*********** 

Chapter 10: Sands and the CIA 

 

It was strange hearing American accents again.

He must have frightened them with his little performance outside, because when he returned to consciousness, he was sitting in a metal chair, his hands cuffed behind the chair back. This was a step up from the wire El had used to bind his hands, but not a big step.

Two men were in the room with him, talking to each other in low voices. They had no idea he was awake.

Being without eyes, Sands reflected, did have its advantages.

“Did you see?” one of them asked. He had a strong Boston accent.

“Yeah,” the other exhaled. “Wow.” This one sounded shorter, rounder. He had the kind of voice that belonged to fat boys who read dirty comics well into their forties while living in their mother’s basement.

To his dismay, Sands became aware that he was not wearing his sunglasses. He never took them off, unless he was absolutely certain he was alone. He had no idea what he looked like now, of course, but he knew it couldn’t be pretty. Once, shortly after El had left Puerto Vallarta, he had explored his face, dipping his fingers into the holes where his eyes had been, and he had felt such self-loathing then that he had nearly eaten his gun. 

So the fact that two total strangers were staring at him now _really_ pissed him off.

“You think that was the mariachi?” asked Boston.

Shorty made a neutral sound. “Could have been. But I don’t think so.”

“Yeah, me either. He looked like he was gonna piss himself.”

Sands bit back a smile. Apparently El was a passable actor. That was good to know. He filed the information away in the mental dossier he kept in his head on the mariachi, tucking it in with notes like how El still dreamed of his wife every night.

“Hey. Look. He’s awake.”

Shit. Okay, so he wasn’t as good an actor as El was. It wasn’t easy to stay still when your head felt like the size of a watermelon.

“Do you want me to get Bel?”

“Nah. Wait a bit,” said Boston. “So, Agent Sands, welcome back. I’ve heard an awful lot about you.”

Sands raised his head. He thought briefly about going the stubborn, silent route, then discarded the notion. Talking was much more fun. “I just bet you have,” he drawled. “Did they tell you I was insane?”

The junior agents hesitated. Clearly they hadn’t expected this. Then Shorty said, “Yeah.”

“Whaddaya know? Looks like they got something right for a change,” he said cheerfully.

“Looks?” Shorty repeated. “Jesus.”

“Again with the deifying,” Sands said, trying unsuccessfully not to smirk. “You’d be surprised how often I get compared to Him.”

“Yeah, I bet,” snorted Boston. “You know why you’re still alive, don’t you?”

Shorty made an aborted sound in the back of his throat, telling Sands quite clearly that Boston wasn’t supposed to have said that. He nodded to himself. So that was how it was. The CIA had no intention of bringing him back to the States. It was going to be a bullet in the back of the head for him.

As soon as they were done with him.

“Well, I don’t imagine you want to know my recipe for _Cochinita Pibil_ ,” Sands grinned. 

“What the fuck is that?” asked Boston

“It’s a slow-roasted pork,” Sands started to say. “You take--”

Boston hit him. Just a slap on the side of the head, but it set off a four-alarm fire inside his skull. Despite his best intentions, he groaned aloud.

“Shut up,” Boston said. “Where is this mariachi guy you associate with? What’s his name?”

“I _associate_ with? You make it sound like we get together and fuck standing up in dark alleys,” Sands said with a grin. He had not had this much fun in a long time. Since being posted to Mexico, he had rarely had any interaction with his fellow agents; he had forgotten how boring they all were.

Boston tapped his foot on the floor, expressing his impatience. “What is his name?”

“He doesn’t have a name,” Sands said, speaking slowly, letting his tone clearly express his belief that not only was Boston mentally deficient, but Boston’s children and grandchildren would be, too. “Surely you knew that already.”

“Everyone has a name,” Shorty said.

“It doesn’t matter what his name is,” snapped Boston. He sounded really pissed, and Sands thought that just maybe he had found the only other non-boring CIA agent in the world. Which was not necessarily a good thing. “Tell us where he is.”

Sands pretended to consider it. “No,” he said.

Boston hit him again.

Sands laughed, using the sound to cover his involuntary gasp of pain. “Oh, come on! You weren’t even trying that time. Put a little oomph into it.”

“You want oomph? You got it, buddy.” 

The blow this time rocked the entire chair back. The pain in his head tripled, and settled in his stomach, making him wonder if he was going to throw up. He tasted blood, swallowed some, and grimaced. It was harder to laugh now, but laugh he did. “That was better,” he said. “Much better.” 

“You better stop,” said Shorty. “If Bel sees him beat up like this, she’ll have a fit.” 

“Oh my Christ,” Sands laughed, delighted. “You two are scared of a woman? I gotta tell you, from one man to another, that really hits below the belt.” He made soft clucking sounds of fake commiseration. 

“That’s it,” said Boston. “I’m gonna rip this fucker’s balls off.”

Feet slid across the floor. Fabric stretched. “Don’t!” cried Shorty. He was obviously holding his companion back, with an effort. “Keep it together, man. You’re only giving him what he wants.”

Sands just sat there, grinning. He hoped he looked like shit.

He sure felt like shit.

Boston pulled free of Shorty’s grip. “Leggo,” he muttered. To Sands he said, “You know we can make you tell us. You were CIA once. You know what we’re capable of.”

“Go ahead,” Sands said. “Bring in your car battery and jumper cables. I’ll wait.”

“You think we’re bluffing?” Boston demanded. He sounded genuinely outraged that his threat had not had the desired effect.

“Please,” Sands scoffed. “I was tortured by the best. You guys can’t even come close.”  
“The best, huh? I suppose you mean Barillo.” 

“Hey, you’re good. Not too swift, though. I bet you didn’t graduate top of your class from the Academy, did you?”

That one was almost worth being hit again.

“Look at that,” Boston said. “Funny how hearing that name doesn’t bother you now. That was some act you put on outside.”

“Did you like it?” Sands asked. “I was thinking of submitting it for Oscar consideration.”

Shorty made an exasperated sound. “He’s never going to tell us.”

“You’re smarter than you look,” Sands said to him. “Good for you.”

“How the hell do you know what I look like?” Shorty demanded. He sounded utterly confused.

“Who cares?” Boston interrupted angrily. Clothing rustled as he folded his arms. “Where is the mariachi?” he asked.

Sands sighed. “Listen to your partner, buddy. You know I’m not going to tell you,” he said, being perfectly serious for a change. “And furthermore, you also know that nothing you to do me will work. So you might as well save yourselves a lot of trouble. If you’re planning to shoot me, just do it now. That way you get to go home sooner. Why, by this time tomorrow you could be sitting in your underwear on your couch, watching Oprah, just like old times.”

Boston lunged forward again. Sands laughed. Shorty grabbed for Boston, and maybe he got a handful of Boston’s shirt, but Boston was obviously stronger, and pulled away before his partner could rein him in this time. 

Sands’ laughter was abruptly cut off as a large hand gripped his jaw. He heard the distinct sound of a pistol being pulled from a holster, and he steeled himself for the shot he knew was coming. They wouldn’t dare kill him, not yet, but there were plenty of places you could shoot a man that were painful, and yet nowhere near fatal. 

“Don’t!” Shorty shouted.

The muzzle of the gun touched him, not on his forehead where he had expected to feel it, but on his empty eyesocket. He caught his breath, too shocked to comprehend what was happening at first. 

Cold and invading, the gun was forced inside, a horrible metal rape he was powerless to stop. The pain was excruciating. His brain tried to process it and balked, wanting to send him back to that day when his life had fallen apart. The sensations were too similar, a nauseating blur of metal and blood and pain, all of it threatening to snap what remained of his sanity.

“Tell me now, you sick fuck,” Boston said. “Or I’m pulling the trigger.”

The voice helped, a little. It was not Dr. Guevara’s voice. It reminded him where he was. He struggled to remain impassive, to stay silent through the pain. Blood streamed down his face, another reminder of the horror he had already lived through once.

But that was the thing, wasn’t it? He had already been there, done that. And just like that, the horror receded. Suddenly what was happening struck him as highly amusing. Boston had almost had him there for a moment, but then, Boston didn’t know who he was dealing with.

Smiling, as though he didn’t have a gun jammed in his eyesocket, he said, “Fuck you.”

In the silence that followed, he quite clearly heard Shorty groan.

Boston pulled the gun free, and Sands bit his lip hard to keep from crying out at the pain that ripped through his skull. The pistol descended again. He heard it coming, and he tried to move his head aside to avoid the blow, but he was too slow.

Pain exploded in his face as his cheekbone broke. Brilliant fireworks went off in his head, pretty colors he hadn’t seen in over a year.

Still smiling, Sands passed out.

****

This time when he woke, only one person shared the room with him. She made a low sound of sympathy. “You look like shit.”

“Thanks,” Sands said wearily. His head hurt too much to lift it. His shoulders ached from slumping forward in the chair, putting all his weight on them. He wondered how long he had been out.

“You’re not really crazy, are you?” Harrison asked. “It’s just an act.”

He laughed, or tried to. All he managed was a breathy wheeze. “Do you really think that?”

There was a long pause. She exhaled a long, slow breath. “No,” she finally said. “I think you lost whatever sanity you had when you lost your eyes.”

“There you go,” he said. “I knew there was a reason they made you Station Chief.” Christ it hurt to talk. Slowly he sat up a little, taking some of the weight off his shoulders. He couldn’t feel his hands, and he wondered vaguely what kind of damage the cuffs had done to his wrists.

“Goddammit, Sheldon. Just tell me what I want to hear.”

Sands grit his teeth and said nothing. He knew she had said his name only to bait him. She had always called him by his name, because she had known how much he hated it.

“Do you even realize the seriousness of your situation?” she asked.

He said nothing. The time for joking and small talk was over. Now was the time for silence.

“Where’s the mariachi?” she asked.

Okay, now was the time for silence, except for a few choice words. “Fuck you,” Sands said.

She gave an angry sigh. “Why the hell are you protecting him? If he was really your friend, he wouldn’t have let you get taken by that stupid bounty hunter.” Her voice grew sly then. “Or maybe he’s already dead. Killed in the same scuffle that ended up with you in custody. Is that it? You want us to think he’s still alive, so we’ll go out on a wild goose chase, extend your life a little longer.”

Metal creaked as she stood up. She had either been sitting in a chair similar to the one he was in, or perched on the edge of a folding table. Knowing her, he guessed the latter. She had always liked showing her legs off, and old habits died hard, even when the man in front of her was blind. “You know we’ll find out the truth, Agent Sands. You might as well spare yourself any further unpleasantness, and tell us.”

He laughed. It was really too funny. He was supposed to be so independent, not caring about anyone except himself. And here he was, practically daring his former boss to hurt him, all to protect a man he had wanted to kill only a year ago.

Life really was amazing sometimes.

“I fail to see what is so funny,” Belinda Harrison snapped.

Sands just laughed. “You fail to see, I fail to see, we _all_ fail to see,” he chanted, laughing harder despite the pain of it. So she thought he was insane. He had no objections to that. He’d even help her out a little.

“Shit,” she swore, drawing out the sibilant sound of the word. She walked past him, heading for the door. 

Sands drew in a big breath. “I can’t fucking see!” he screamed after her as she hurried out of the room.

When the door shut behind her, he started laughing again.

****

They left him alone.

At least, he was pretty sure he was alone. He held his breath for long periods of time, listening hard. If there was anyone in the room with him, they were doing a hell of a job staying quiet. So at last he relaxed a little, deciding that he was well and truly alone. This was good – it hurt too damn much to keep laughing.

He wondered how long he had been inside the ranch house. Not that he was worried. He only wanted to know for the sake of knowing. He had told El the truth. There was nothing they could do that would make him talk. He was not afraid of pain. The only thing that frightened him was the thought of losing his freedom. And if they did that, if they locked him up, they would have to keep him drugged all the time to prevent him from attacking them every time they opened the door to bring him food or question him. And if they had to drug him, they had already lost.

It was a no-win situation for them. Except they hadn’t realized that yet. He knew they hadn’t, because he was still alive.

_Why the hell are you protecting him?_

If only he knew. Self-sacrifice was an alien concept to Sands. He had never in his life done anything for someone else unless he could see something in it for himself. He had not been very old when he had realized the harsh nature of the world -- unless you looked out for yourself, you were going to get fucked. That was just the way of it.

The key was control. You had to have it, or you lost. Game over, go home, hope your family picks out a nice casket. When you were the one in control, you called all the shots. Everyone did just what you wanted them to do, while you stood at the center of it all and pulled the strings.

Which was right where Sands wanted to be.

So he looked out for himself. He had taken control, and he had vowed to never once let it go.

It had soon become obvious, though, that not everyone followed this basic prescription for life. So he did it for them. He kept the balance, when they could not. Sometimes this meant manufacturing a few tears when your childhood enemy died in an accident. Sometimes it meant assassinating a president. You just never knew what was needed.

But since losing his eyes, thoughts of balance had been far from his mind. He himself had been neatly cancelled out of the equation, crossed out by a ruthless hand. He didn’t believe in God, but someone out there sure didn’t want him in the game anymore. He had been cast out on his own, with no one to look out for except himself, just the way he had always wanted it.

He could remember, dimly, the day Ramirez had brought him to the FBI agent’s house. Most of that day, after the gunfight, was a painful blur in his memory, but he did remember one very clear moment.

The kid had been holding his hand while he lay moaning and thrashing about with pain in Ramirez’s guest bedroom. Even when the doctor’s painkillers had finally taken hold, the kid had not let go. He had not cared. He had been heading swiftly toward unconsciousness then, and his only thought at the time had been one of deepest gratitude for the ignorance of oblivion.

But before he had passed out, he remembered the kid saying, “What will happen to him now?”

And Ramirez, who had been standing behind the kid, had said, “I guess that’s up to him.”

Had things worked out differently, he supposed he would have stayed at Ramirez’s for a while. He would have used the time to figure out what he was going to do next. As it was, he had never gotten the chance. Because El had found him first.

El Mariachi, the man with no name. Oh, he knew El’s name, but he would never use it. He respected the man too much for that.

El, the killer who only wanted to live in peace. He had lied to El when he said he didn’t want to torture that soldier in Villa de Cos, but he done it to make El feel better. 

Before El, he hadn’t given a rat’s ass what anyone thought of him, so long as they did what he wanted. Cucuy had been a perfect example. The man could have snapped him in half at any moment, but Sands had not been afraid of him. He had known the man hated him – calling someone like Cucuy a Mexi-can’t was either very brave or very stupid -- but he hadn’t cared. All that had mattered was that Cucuy did what Sands wanted him to do.

But for some stupid reason, he cared what El thought about him. He didn’t want the mariachi to hate him. One thing he hadn’t lied about -- El was the only friend he had ever known. He didn’t want to lose that. It was stupid, and it was weak, and he sneered at himself for feeling that way, but the truth was, he didn’t want to lose his friend.

It occurred to him that all those other relationships, the ones he had tried so hard to cultivate, the ones that had ultimately failed – it occurred to him that they had failed precisely because he had tried too hard. He had tried to be normal, to be someone he was not. But with El, he had never pretended. He had never been anyone but himself. 

And El had accepted him. Reluctantly, to be sure, and with reservations, but it was still acceptance. To Sands, who had been laughed at and cast out all his life, that acceptance was everything.

The funny thing was, he couldn’t pinpoint an exact moment when he had started trusting El. It had just…happened. He hadn’t planned on it, or even wanted it. Hell, the last time he had trusted someone he had lost his eyes. He had never expected to trust anyone again. 

But it had happened anyway. Without his permission, without his consent. One day he had woken up, and he had realized things had changed. 

And the hell of it was, he hadn’t minded.

If he had to choose a moment, though, a time when he had truly known for sure the changed nature of their relationship, he would say it was the night he played the guitar for El, the night El had kissed him (something he absolutely did not think about), the night before the shoot-out at Escalante’s hacienda. He had sat there under the stars with the mariachi, and stupidly wished that the night would not end. Morning had meant going down to the hacienda and killing men. But under cover of darkness, on that long night, everything had seemed possible.

He snorted, and shifted a little in the chair, uncomfortable with the direction of his thoughts. Hell, he knew it was stupid. He had known it even back then.

So why was he here now? Why hadn’t he just told them what they wanted? Why was he protecting El? Any debts he owed the mariachi had been repaid, many times over. He had proved he could get by on his own, without El. There was nothing El had that he needed.

So why, then?

A bitter chuckle escaped him. The truth, no matter how unpleasant, was always unavoidable. Never more so than when you were left alone with it in a small room where you were chained to a chair, and where they had turned down the air conditioning so low you were shivering with cold. 

He cared what happened to El. 

He cared.

Now _there_ was something to laugh about. But Sands found nothing humorous about it. Nothing at all.

The CIA wanted him dead. They thought he was insane, beyond rehabilitation, beyond redemption. As soon as they realized he would never tell them where El was, they would kill him. Possibly they would use him as bait to draw the mariachi out, but he didn’t think they would even bother. They would simply shoot him in the back of the head and dump his body somewhere, just another unidentified murder victim for the Mexican police to find.

Sands did not want to die. He had never enjoyed life much, but it was the only life he had. He wasn’t ready to give it up. Especially not now, when he had just found a reason to live that did not involve money or power. For the first time in his life, he cared about someone other than himself. He wanted to stick around and see what happened next.

When it all went down, he wanted to be there. Right beside El.

And as he thought this, something else occurred to him. He had forgiven El for Puerto Vallarta. He had forgiven the man a long time ago. He just hadn’t wanted to admit it to himself.

He drew in a deep breath. They would be coming back soon. Sleep deprivation would be high on their list of torments, and since they couldn’t be sure if he was sleeping or not, they would send someone in at various intervals. In all probability, Shorty or Boston was on his way here right now.

That was fine. Sands smiled. He was ready for them.

*********** 

Chapter 11: El Comes to Collect

 

The hallway seemed to stretch on forever, which was strange, because the ranch house had not looked this big from the outside. But at last El found the door he was looking for. He flung it open and hurried inside. 

Sands was shackled to a chair. His head hung low, his hair shielding his face. There was an ugly rasp to his breathing. 

“Get up,” El said. “We have to move quickly.” 

He unlocked the handcuffs, and Sands slumped forward. Frowning, El caught him and lowered him to the floor. “Sands?” 

He gasped in shock. Sands’ sunglasses were gone. He had been badly beaten. His face was covered with blood. It looked like he had wept copious tears of crimson, the same way, El imagined, he had looked on the day he had been blinded. 

“What did they do to you?” El breathed in horror. 

Sands stirred. “El?” 

“We have to go,” he said, but there was no conviction in his voice. There was nowhere to go, and he knew it. The proof was right there in front of him.

Sands was dying. 

“Yeah,” Sands sighed. 

El cast a frantic glance around the room. His heart had begun to pound with an ugly, painful rhythm that hurt his chest. 

He had waited too long. He was too late. 

“Don’t look so worried,” Sands whispered. “I’m fine.” 

El shook his head. “I’m not worried,” he lied. 

“Yes, you are,” Sands breathed. “I can see it on your face.” He smiled. A real smile. “I can see you, El.” 

He died, still smiling. 

El was frozen in shock. It wasn’t possible. After everything they had been through, it wasn’t right that it ended this way. 

It wasn’t fair. 

He threw back his head and shouted in fury. He didn’t care who heard him, who came running. Let the entire Central Intelligence Agency find him. He didn’t care anymore. He was going to kill them all. 

The door to the room opened. El stood up and his hands snapped downward to the holsters at his hips. But somehow he had lost his guns. He was completely defenseless as the black-clad soldiers swarmed into the room and opened fire. 

He went down under their bullets, and his last thought was that he would not be sorry to die. At least now he would get to be with Carolina again. 

**** 

He woke with a jerk, a startled cry lodged in his throat. 

He looked around wildly, trying to remember where he was, how he had gotten here. He was soaked in sweat. He wiped his face, feeling his fingers tremble as they touched his own skin. He sank back onto the bed with a low, groaning sigh. 

It was time to go. Sands had been with the CIA for almost thirty hours. 

After leaving the ranch house yesterday he had returned to their motel room outside the city. He had paced the floor aimlessly for hours. He had turned the TV on and off a hundred times. He had tried to play his guitar, but his fingers had stumbled over the strings, and he had been unable to make the instrument sing for him.

His gaze had kept returning to the other guitar. The one meant for Sands.

Sometime in late afternoon, he had finally gotten up and gone out. He had found a seedy bar a few blocks over, slapped a handful of money on the table, and proceeded to get filthy drunk.

This morning he had woken up in a gutter on the far side of the city, his mouth tasting like dirt and a silver dagger slid down inside his boot. He had no idea how he had gotten there, or where the knife had come from. The night before was a dark blot on his memory.

He had hailed a taxi and made his way back to the motel, where he had showered and fallen asleep on the bed, still naked and dripping wet.

It was six o’clock now. Time to return to the ranch house and collect his reward. 

Time to collect Sands.

He checked his guns. He pulled his hair back into a ponytail, and put on his jacket with the scorpion on the back – today there was no need for disguises. He checked his guns again. He would have to leave them in the car, but he had no idea what was going to happen today. There might be a chance to go back and retrieve them. 

He packed his bag, and Sands’. He put the guitars in their cases. He loaded both bags and the guitars into the trunk of his car. He went back into the motel room and filled a plastic bottle with water from the bathroom sink, hesitated, then grabbed what was left of a bag of oranges he had bought at an open-air market. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do.  
Finally, he checked his guns, one last time.

He was ready. 

**** 

He drove out to the ranch house slowly, checking the rearview mirror often. He would not have been surprised to see a tail out there, but he saw no one. Apparently Belinda Harrison and the CIA had not bothered following him yesterday after he had left them. 

With the house still out of sight, he pulled over to the side of the road and stopped the car. He wanted to have a closer look at his new dagger. He had absolutely no idea how it had come into his possession -- if he had bought it, won it in a barfight, or simply found it on the street. The hilt and sheath were silver, and the blade was nicked and worn; it had obviously seen use before. Both the sheath and hilt bore a stylized depiction of a scorpion.

El gazed at the knife for a long time, then slid it back into its sheath. He slipped this into his boot and snugged the leg of his pants down again. He would be frisked before entering the ranch house, but hopefully they wouldn’t find the knife. He would feel much better about his chances of success today if he had even just one weapon at his disposal.

He walked right up to the gate. The soldiers on guard duty were the same as yesterday, and they recognized him. They did not look happy to see him.

He said nothing as they ordered him out of the car. They checked him for weapons, and he relaxed a little in relief when the secret in his boot went unnoticed.

The man with the radio called in, letting Belinda Harrison know he had arrived. He could hear the surprise in her voice when she responded, although she tried hard to mask it. His already-minimal respect for her went down another notch. She ought to have expected him to return.

“You can go in,” said the soldier with the radio. “She’ll be waiting for you.”

Once again El wished he had never spoken in English in front of these men. The more secrets he had from them, the better. He hoped he would not have to kill them when the time came, though. They were just doing their job, after all; they were innocent in this whole mess.

He just had to remember to stay calm. What was it Sands said? _Don’t freak out._

He walked slowly up the driveway. Tinny music sounded from a radio in the garage. The same two cars from yesterday were still parked there. Two men in fatigues were washing the cars with sponges dipped in sudsy galvanized tin buckets.

There was no sign of the junior CIA agents. 

Belinda Harrison walked out onto the front porch. She was wearing jean shorts again, and a black T-shirt. A pistol was tucked in the waistband of her jeans. “I didn’t think you were coming back,” she said. She sounded a little hoarse, the result of Sands choking her. Purple bruises shaped like fingers lined the sides of her neck. Seeing those bruises gave El a savage burst of pleasure. He felt guilty for that pleasure, but not too guilty. She deserved each and every one of those bruises.

“I said I would,” El said, remembering at the last second to thicken his accent, trying to sound the way he had yesterday. He wanted to give her no reason to think of him as anything other than a dumb Mexican. She would be hard enough to take down. He couldn’t afford to make her suspicious of him.

She gave him a thin smile. “I’ve learned not to trust the promises of men,” she said. “Congratulations. You’re one of the few who’s kept his word.”

El said nothing to this.

“Well come on,” she said. “Let’s get this over with.” She turned around and walked into the house. She held the door for him.

A little bemused, he followed her in.

The interior of the house looked like, well, a house. There was no sign that a branch of the U.S. Government had set up shop here. El looked around as best he could without appearing to. He supposed the things like surveillance equipment were in back rooms that he would not be allowed to see.

Harrison led him to the dining room table, which was a huge wooden slab surrounded by thick wooden chairs. The house was uncomfortably hot, which was odd because El had seen the air conditioning unit on the side of the building. He wondered if it was broken.

“Now then.” She went to a desk beside the table, opened a drawer, and pulled out a large checkbook. “What is your name?” 

El gaped at her. “You are going to write me a check?”

She arched an eyebrow. “You think I have $10,000 in cash tucked away in the flour jar in the kitchen?”

“What am I supposed to do with a check?” he demanded. He wondered where the two junior agents were, or how many soldiers were in the house right now. He had been forced into fights before where he didn’t know how many enemies he was facing, and he had never liked it. “No bank in Durango will cash it.”

“I don’t give a fuck what you do with it,” Harrison snapped. She sat at the head of the table and screwed the top off a slim black pen. “Now, what’s your name?”

“Jorge,” he said. “Jorge Ramirez.”

“Fine. Why don’t you have a seat, Mr. Ramirez?” She began writing out the check. She was left-handed, he noticed.

He ambled across the room and sat in the chair to her left, closer to her than she would have liked. She glanced up at him and frowned. He folded his hands atop the table, and she relaxed again and went back to writing.

He watched her fill out the check. Her handwriting was small and neat. Her signature was no-nonsense, no frills or embellishments. Just her name.

She tore the check out of the book. “There you are. The United States thanks you for your help.”

“What will happen to him?” he asked.

“To Agent Sands?” She shrugged. “I really don’t see that as any of your business. But I can promise you he won’t come to any harm. That’s not why we wanted him. All we want to do is help him. He’ll be taken back to the U.S., where he will receive the finest treatments we can offer. Obviously we can’t do anything for his eyes, but we may yet be able to cure his madness. There are so many wonderful drugs out there. With the proper medications, he could even live an almost-normal life -- in an institution, of course.” She held out the check.

The fate she described for Sands sounded monstrous. El had a momentary vision of himself walking into a white room with padded walls, where Sands sat in the corner, drugged into insensibility, too far gone to even know he had a visitor. Should such a horror ever come to pass, he knew he would put a bullet in Sands’ head. It would be a mercy to kill him, rather than condemn him to a half-life in some asylum. Sands would even thank him for it, if he was able to understand what was happening to him.

El repressed a shudder as the horrible images crossed his mind. He took the check, folded it in half, and put it in his pocket. “Gracias.”

Belinda Harrison smiled, a mere thinning of her lips. She put the cap on the pen and started to screw it back on.

Beneath the table, El hooked his foot under the crossbar of her chair. He yanked his leg up and forward with all his might, slamming his knee into the underside of the table in the process.

The chair rocked back on two legs, then tipped over, spilling a very surprised Belinda Harrison to the ground.

El sprang to his feet and hurried around the table, limping a little from the hurt in his knee. Despite her shocked appearance, she was already recovering, reaching for her gun. Quickly he stomped on her left wrist, pinning her arm to the floor. He crouched down low, feeling the bones in her wrist grind together beneath his foot as he did so. 

He picked up her gun and aimed it at her head. “Don’t make a sound.”

“You _bastard_ ,” she hissed. “You think you’re walking out of this house alive now? You just blew it, mister.” She was on her back with her feet and legs in the air because of the chair, but she still somehow managed to look dignified.

She started to struggle, trying to get up. “Don’t,” El warned her. He shifted his weight ever so slightly, so his boot pressed harder on her wrist. She blanched, and went still.

“Where is everyone?” he asked.

She made a face, and he saw that she meant not to tell him. Hating what she made him do, he let all his weight come down on her wrist.

She cried out as the bones broke. Immediately El slapped his hand over her mouth. The act of leaning in so he could reach her face made her arm roll under his boot, and she thrashed about in pain.

He removed his foot. “Not a sound,” he threatened.

She nodded. Her eyes glared up at him, full of pain and hatred. She would be a formidable enemy, El knew. He would have to be on his guard around her at all times. If she even thought she had a chance, she was going to take it. And he could not allow that to happen.

He took his hand off her mouth. “Where are they?”

She swallowed hard. “Tom went into town. Rick is outside.” 

“Who else is in the house?” he asked. 

“No one,” she said. She saw his jaw tighten, and she hurried on before he could hurt her again. “I mean it! They don’t come in here much. They stay outside, or in the barracks.”

The barracks. He supposed she meant the old stables.

She was gaining confidence with every word. “Do you hear me? There’s a whole unit of U.S. soldiers out there, mister. You’re not going to get away with this.”

“You don’t even know what I want,” El said.

This stopped her. Her brow furrowed. She didn’t like being shown up, El realized. She was the kind of person who would never admit when she was wrong. No wonder she had hated working with Sands so much.

“Where is Agent Sands?” he asked.

Now she looked even more confused. She had been expecting rape, he supposed. Robbery, even. Or maybe just plain old-fashioned killing. This simple question caught her by surprise. “Why do you care?” she asked.

“Just tell me,” he said.

“You can’t have him back,” she said. “The cartels might be offering more money for him, but it’s too late. He’s already been sent back home.”

El went very still. In the back of his mind, a panicked flare went up. He stared down at her, trying to tell if she was lying. Was it possible? Could they have gotten rid of Sands so fast? 

He decided she was lying. She had to be. If they had taken Sands back to the U.S., she would have gone with him. Or returned to the embassy in Mexico City. Either way, she would not be here anymore. 

He leaned in. “Where is Agent Sands? And if you lie to me again, I will break your other arm.”

She went very pale. She seemed to have finally realized that her lifespan had shortened considerably since El had walked into the house. “In the back,” she said. “The back bedroom.”

“Good. Take me there.”

“Why do you want him?” she asked. “What are they offering you?”

“No one is offering me anything,” El said. In her own way, Belinda Harrison was just like Sands – the concept of friendship was foreign to her. He grabbed her upper arm and bodily lifted her upright. He set her on the floor, and shifted his grip to her left forearm, just below the break in her wrist. He squeezed tight. “Now, take me there.” He placed the muzzle of her gun against the side of her head. He didn’t want to have to shoot her, but he would, if she made him.

And she knew it, too. She stared at him. “You’re that mariachi,” she said flatly.

El gave her a cold smile. “I am the mariachi,” he said.

***********

Chapter 12: Showdown with the CIA

 

El Mariachi and Belinda Harrison walked through the house. No one saw them. Had she been a different kind of woman, El reflected, that would not have been true, and his plan would have been doomed to failure right from the start. But she was determined to show the world -- and men in particular -- that she was in charge, and so there were no soldiers inside, no guards. He understood now what Sands had meant when the agent had said she made it difficult for men working with her. The soldiers probably hated her. It was little wonder they were not in the house.

The door to the bedroom was closed. It looked nothing like the door from his nightmare, and that made El feel better. But he could not prevent himself from feeling a jolt of worry. He had changed Sands’ plan around to make it easier for himself, to allow him to walk away from the CIA with a minimum of fuss. But he never should have agreed to the plan at all. He knew that now. It had been insanity to come here. 

And he knew one other thing. There was no way he could shoot Sands. He just couldn’t do it.

“Open it,” he said gruffly.

She balked. “If you leave now, I won’t say anything. No one will ever need to know what happened.” She lifted her chin. “This is the only chance you’ll get. I suggest you take it.”

El pressed the gun harder against her skull. “Open it.”

She reached out with her free hand and opened the door. It swung inward on its hinges. A blast of cold air escaped out into the hall, and El suddenly knew why the rest of the house was so hot. They had closed the vents, and redirected all the cold into this one room.

He felt a slow boil begin in his veins.

He shoved her forward, forcing her to walk ahead of him. They stepped into the room, and El kicked the door closed behind him. Not all the way though -- he didn’t want it shutting and possibly locking him in. He made sure the door was cracked open, then turned around and finally let himself see.

The only furniture in the room was a metal folding table and two matching folding chairs. Sands sat in the foremost chair, his hands cuffed behind him. His head was thrown back. He was shuddering with cold, but when he heard the door open he smiled wearily. “I knew you’d come back, bitch.”

This comment had obviously been aimed at Belinda Harrison. Before she could reply, El said, “I told you I would.”

Sands started in surprise. That little gesture made El’s fury grow a little more. Two days ago Sands would have known the instant he walked into the room. The agent had to be hurting badly if his focus was off so much.

Sands tried to laugh, then winced. “I don’t believe it,” he breathed. “You came back.”

El heard the relief in his voice. And it was little wonder. The right side of Sands’ face was a mass of color, a horrid mix of dried blood and vivid bruising. Most of the blood had come from his eyesocket, and El felt his stomach turn over at the sight. He could not imagine what they had done to him to make him bleed like that.

He tried to keep his voice light, so Sands would not know how badly affected he was by all this. “Well, I had nothing better to do today,” he said.

This time Sands did not laugh. “Develop a sense of humor later,” he snapped. He lifted his head and sat up as straight as he could, his breath catching on a gasp of pain. “Get me the fuck out of here.” He sounded tired and hurt, but he was obviously not dying. Only a healthy man could sound as petulant as Sands did now.

The lingering fear from his dream faded away completely. El grinned. 

He turned to Harrison. His smile died. That simmering in his blood was much stronger now. “Unlock him.”

“I don’t have the key,” she said.

He had never struck a woman before, but El found himself nearly quivering with the need to release his pent-up rage on Belinda Harrison. He twisted her broken wrist, stopping himself only at the last minute from doing serious damage. She uttered a sharp cry of pain and tried to kick him. He cocked her gun, and jammed the barrel harder against her head.

She went still right away. “In my pocket,” she said sullenly.

“Why, _Bel_ , you do not sound happy at all,” Sands said with mock sympathy, in between shivers. “Whatever could be bothering you?”

“Shut the fuck up, Sheldon,” she snapped.

Sands laughed. It hurt him to laugh, El saw, but he laughed anyway.

Harrison got the key out of her pocket. She had to reach awkwardly across her body with her right hand in order to do it, but El made no move to help. He knew the moment he let go of her, she would turn on him.

When she had the key, he walked her up to the chair where Sands sat. She unlocked the cuffs, and let them drop to the floor. 

Sands groaned in relief. Thin raw circles ringed both his wrists, and trails of blood ran down his fingers. He pulled his arms around the chair and let his hands rest in his lap. He bowed his head, and for a moment El thought he was going to faint. “Don’t kill her too quickly,” he said. “I want to get a few licks in first.”

“You better not kill me,” Belinda Harrison said. She did not sound very brave though.

“Can you walk?” El asked. Despite his jacket, he was starting to shiver. It was freezing in this room.

“Yeah.”

El looked at Harrison again. “Where are his sunglasses?”

She looked at him like he had spoken a foreign language. “What?”

“He said, ‘Where are his sunglasses?’ Bitch.” Sands smirked. “That last part was all mine, though.”

El punctuated the point with another squeeze of her wrist. She gasped. “In my back pocket!”

“Get them,” El said.

Slowly she took the sunglasses from her back pocket. They looked a little bent from having been sat on, but they were still intact. She shoved them into Sands’ hand with a moue of disgust. “Here.”

“You’re too kind,” Sands murmured. He slid the sunglasses on gingerly, his breath hissing through his teeth. His fingers hovered over his broken cheek, not quite daring to touch it. “Fuck.”

El turned her so she was facing the door. “Time to go.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Sands took a deep breath and stood up. He swayed, and reached out with one hand to grab hold of the chair. “Ready when you are.”

El waited to see if the agent was going to fall down, then decided Sands would be all right. He nudged Harrison toward the door. “Open it.”

“What do you think you’re going to do?” she demanded. “You can’t just walk out of this house. My men will gun you down the moment they see you.”

El stopped. He looked back at Sands, trying not to panic. He had absolutely no idea what to do next. 

And Sands stepped up, providing the help El needed. “Oh, I think we’ll do just fine,” he drawled. “I figure we’ll just use that little underground tunnel to the garage. No one will even know we’re gone.”

Harrison’s face twisted in hatred. “You fucking prick,” she said, each word clear and distinct.

Sands smiled so hard the cut on his cheek broke open and began bleeding again. “That’s me, baby. I’m just a prick with legs.”

“How did you know that?” El asked.

“I heard them talking,” Sands said. He shrugged. To Harrison he said, “Don’t blame your goons. It’s hard to tell when the man with no eyes is unconscious, and when he can hear your every word.”

She stiffened in El’s grip, and he tensed, waiting for her to fight him. Then she went limp. “What happens now?”

“We are leaving,” El said.

****

The underground tunnel was accessed through a door in the basement. El had no idea why the original occupants of the house had built such a thing, but he was grateful for it.

He less than thrilled, however, about walking through the tunnel. It was unlit, and he couldn’t see a thing. Beside him, Belinda Harrison was quiet. She seemed to have given up all thoughts of escape, and that alone made El distrust her. He knew she wouldn’t have surrendered this easily. Sooner or later, she was going to try something.

Sands walked behind them, using the sound of their footsteps to guide him. His gait was uneven, and he kept bumping into the walls. As they had made their way through the house, he had walked into an end table in the living room and nearly fallen. Since both his hands were occupied with Belinda Harrison, El had been unable to help him. But he was worried. For the first time since El had known him, Sands was acting like a blind man.

And that worry only made him angrier. 

The darkness was absolute. El had no idea what lay ahead of him. His knee hurt where he had slammed it into the table, and he was forced to limp. He did not want to walk into a post or stumble on a clod of dirt, or do anything to give Harrison the chance she was waiting for. So he moved slowly, inching along through the dark.

A drawling voice in his head said, _Welcome to my world, El_. He kept moving, and did his best to ignore the voice.

He began to wonder what he should do with his captive. She could not come with them, but he was reluctant to kill her, even after all she had done. Maybe he could knock her unconscious and leave her here in the tunnel.

“You’ll have to kill her,” Sands said, seemingly reading his mind.

Harrison jerked in El’s grip. “You can’t,” she gasped. 

“Well, you’re not coming with us,” Sands said from behind her. “And we can’t let you go, because then you’ll just hunt us down again.”

“No, we won’t,” Harrison said. “I give you my word. But the only way that will happen is if you let me go. I can’t stop the hunt if I’m dead. Let me go, and I promise we’ll leave you alone.”

“No good,” El said, throwing her own words back in her face. “I’ve learned not to trust the promises women make.”

She snarled with rage. “If you kill me, they’ll send more soldiers and more agents. You won’t be able to take a piss without us knowing it.”

“Quiet!” Sands snapped. “Shut up!”

He was not just silencing her out of anger, El realized. There was a warning note to his voice. Someone was out there, and the agent had heard them.

Despite the danger of their situation, El smiled.

Sands was back in the game.

He leaned in close to Belinda Harrison. He put his lips right by her ear and breathed, “If you make so much as a single sound, I will kill you first, and then whoever is out there.” He knew she wouldn’t care about the other person, but he hoped she would take the threat to herself seriously.

She gulped and nodded.

El listened. After a moment he could hear it: the sound of footsteps. They were still far away, and they were very quiet, but they were unmistakably there. 

He shook his head. Sands had heard those footsteps, even over the sound of Belinda Harrison’s voice. El had known his hearing was good, but he was amazed all over again at just how good.

But they needed weapons. The only gun between all of three of them was currently aimed at Belinda Harrison’s head. He dared not give it to Sands. 

And then he remembered.

“Sands.” He kept his voice a low whisper. “My right boot.”

Sands muttered something El could not hear, then came forward. He knelt down with a muffled curse. El felt a hand lightly touch his knee, and he jumped instinctively at the strangeness of the sensation.

“Stay still, goddamnit,” Sands whispered. His hand moved downward, finding the bottom of El’s pant leg. He lifted it up, and the chains on the fabric jingled merrily.

“Oh, Christ,” Sands swore. “Go on ahead. _Quietly_.” He pulled the dagger out from El’s boot and stood up.

El applied pressure to Harrison’s arm. She hissed in pain, but made no other sound. She walked obediently forward. El moved with her, as silently as he could, cursing his clothing.

He stopped after a few steps. He did not want to get too far ahead.

Behind him, Sands waited.

Out in the tunnel, the footsteps drew nearer. They were hesitant, and not terribly quiet. It occurred to El that whoever was coming was just as blind as they all were. The man was in total darkness, with no idea of what was around him. No doubt he was frightened – the man had probably never spent any length of time in darkness.

But Sands had lived in the dark for over a year. He knew it intimately, and he was not afraid of it.

The other man never had a chance. He drew near, and El heard a sudden blur of movement. Then the sick sound of a knife entering flesh. The man in the tunnel uttered a thick gagging sound. Something clattered to the ground.

The man collapsed.

Harrison gave a soft sigh. El expected her to lash out, but she did not move.

He heard Sands kneel down. The knife slid back into its sheath, and from there into Sands’ boot. The former agent let out a mirthless chuckle. “Well, hello, Boston. You sick fuck.”

Belinda Harrison stiffened. “Rick?”

“Was that his name?” Sands asked. He stood up. Something clattered, and then El heard the distinct sound of a gun being cocked.

Two flashes lit up the tunnel. The gunshots were deafening in such an enclosed space. Several feet away, two men tumbled to the floor.

El’s breath caught. He had never even heard the other two men. They had been creeping through the tunnel, using the sound of the CIA agent’s footsteps to hide their own progress. They had been better than the man Sands had called Boston, but not good enough.

Belinda Harrison was just as stunned. “Oh my God. How did you know they were there?”

Sands walked right up to her, brushing past El as if the mariachi wasn’t even there. “I’m blind, you bitch. Not deaf.”

She laughed, a short ugly sound. “You could have been. Rick wanted to, you know. He wanted to stick a needle in your ear and see if you talked then.” Her voice dropped to a snarl full of hatred. “I should have let him.”

El closed his eyes in horror. He could not be rid of this woman fast enough. She was pure poison, all the way through. 

“You would have liked that, wouldn’t you?” Sands drew his arm back and hit Belinda Harrison across the face. She was knocked backward into El, who staggered with her added weight. She dropped like a stone. He didn’t bother trying to catch her. He just let her hit the ground.

“Well,” Sands said, “should I do it? Should I live out the American dream, and shoot my boss in the head?”

“She is not your boss anymore,” El said. 

“No, she isn’t,” Sands agreed. He sounded as though he might fall down at any moment. “Which actually makes it easier to kill her. But -- we still need her. She’s our ticket out of here.”

He knelt down again. He must have done something to wake Harrison, because she yelped and sat up quickly. And she came up swinging. One of her fists struck El on his injured knee, making him gasp. The other fist connected with Sands’ face. The agent let out a sharp cry of pain, and hit her again.

Whimpering, she tumbled backward, into El’s legs. He leaned down and scooped her up. He pressed her gun to the back of her head. “We’re leaving now,” he said. “You tell them not to shoot at us. _Comprende?_ ”

She nodded sullenly. “I will get you fuckers,” she vowed. Her voice sounded muffled; her mouth was bleeding.

El started to push her forward, then stopped. “Sands?” The agent was still kneeling down in front of them, a clear sign that all was not well with him.

“Yeah,” came the whispered reply.

El frowned. He dared not let go of Harrison. He didn’t want to ask, _Are you all right?_ and humiliate his friend in front of this woman. So he asked, “Are you still standing?”

A long silence was his only response. He was about to throw Harrison to the ground and kneel down when he heard Sands chuckle wearily. “Still,” Sands said. He rose to his feet, rather unsteadily, bumping into the wall.

“You don’t sound like you’re doing very well, Sheldon,” said Belinda Harrison in a sickly-sweet voice. “Maybe you ought to see a doctor.” She stressed the word “see”, imbuing it with as much sarcasm as she could.

El gave her broken wrist a vicious squeeze, prompting her to cry out and arch against him. “Shut up,” he ordered.

Sands would not be baited. He turned around. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. He started walking forward.

Pushing his captive in front of him, El followed.

****

The tunnel sloped upward for a stretch, then ended at a door. Sands stood aside so Belinda Harrison could reach the knob. “Open it,” he said.

“Listen,” she said. She tried one more time to persuade them to let her go, until El cocked the gun and shoved it under her chin. She fell silent, but not before El heard her voice thicken with tears of rage.

She opened the door. Light spilled in, and El winced back from it. Already his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and the light from the garage seemed unnaturally bright.

“Halt where you are!” shouted a voice from within the garage.

“Tell them not to shoot us,” El told Harrison. “To let us go.”

She hesitated, and he gave her wrist another hard squeeze. She yelped, and cried, “Don’t shoot! Put down your weapons. Let them go!”

With her in the lead, they stepped into the garage. El’s eyes began to adjust to the light, and he could see once more.

The wide garage doors were raised. Three cars were parked inside. Eight soldiers in fatigues stood in a loose semicircle across the garage floor, their weapons aimed at El. They seemed disinclined to lower those weapons.

“Do it!” Belinda Harrison shouted. “Let them go!”

The man in the middle of the circle glanced at his comrades, then abruptly lowered his rifle. The others followed suit, some more reluctantly than others.

“Good ol’ Bel,” Sands muttered. “Still keeping those men hopping.”

El looked at him. Harrison’s blow had re-opened his wounds, and he was bleeding again from his cheek and his eyesocket. Blood coated his face all way down to his throat. He looked like shit. But he was upright, smiling snidely at the soldiers forced to obey a woman’s orders.

El marched Harrison to the closest car and made her open the door. Sands followed them, moving with definite difficulty now.

“Tell them not to follow us,” El said into her ear. “We will drop you off when we are away from the ranch. If they follow us, we will dump your dead body on the road.”

She swallowed hard. Blood darkened her lips and chin from where Sands had struck her. “Stay here,” she said to the soldiers. “Don’t follow.”

They got into the car. El sat right next to her, squashed into the driver’s seat with her. He continued holding the gun on her, and he did not let go of her injured arm. Sands climbed in back, rolled down the window, and aimed his stolen gun in the general direction of the soldiers. He had to hold it with both hands, El saw, to keep from dropping it.

Harrison reached up and removed the keys from atop the sun visor. She started the car. “Where am I going?” she asked.

“Just drive,” El said.

She pulled out of the garage. The soldiers came together in a group as they watched the car leave. One of them raised a radio to his mouth and spoke into it.

Just as the car turned out of the garage, Sands started shooting. He didn’t come close to hitting any of the soldiers, but that had not been his intention. The soldiers hurried to take cover behind the other cars, giving them a clean escape.

Sands fired the gun empty, then tossed it out the window.

They drove up to the gate. The two soldiers standing there looked furious. “Don’t follow us,” Belinda Harrison snapped. “I’ll be fine.”

“That’s what you think,” Sands muttered. She tensed at this, but said nothing.

“Turn left,” El said. He couldn’t wait to get rid of this woman. She stank of sweat, and the left side of her body was pressed against him, making him feel distinctly dirty, even through his clothes. He couldn’t help the irrational feeling that her poison was seeping into him through their close contact. If he was not rid of her fast, he would end up as crazy as she was.

She swung the car to the left, onto the road. El glanced into the side mirror and saw that the soldiers had all left the garage in order to watch. They still carried their weapons, but none of them made any move to fire.

He could not help wondering just what those men were thinking. Perhaps they were glad to see her go.

When his own car came into view, he ordered her to stop. She slammed on the brakes, hard. El saw the look on her face and knew what she meant to do, so he was able to brace himself, but Sands went flying headfirst into the seat-back in front of him. He made a strangled sound of pain and fury, then slumped.

As soon as the car was safely stopped, El opened the door. He leaned over, took the keys out of the ignition, thrust them into her hand, and dragged her out of the car by her injured arm. He had never killed a woman in cold blood before, but he found himself severely tempted now.

He marched her to the back of the car. “Open the trunk.”

“No.” She went very pale.

“Do it,” El said coldly.

Her hands shook as she opened the trunk.

“Get in,” El said.

“No!” she said. She rounded on him, kicking at his hurt knee and hitting at him with her free hand.

El had expected this. He pulled the gun back and brought it down on her skull. Instantly she slumped. The fist that had been aimed at his face dropped, and her arm draped over his shoulder as she collapsed, her eyes rolling up in her head.

El laid her in the trunk, tossed the keys in beside her, and shut the door. He walked around the car and opened the back door.

Sands was crumpled on the floor of the back seat. He was just coming to. “El.”

“I’m here,” El said. 

Sands stumbled from the car. He walked under his own power at first, but after three steps his knees buckled and he fell. “Shit,” he whispered.

El slung an arm about his shoulders and pulled him up. To his surprise, Sands did not resist. 

He guided Sands to his car, and into the back seat. He thrust the water bottle into the agent’s hand. “Here.”

Sands lay his head back on the seat. “Is it tequila?” he asked with a weary smile.

“No,” El said. “It’s Sunday. They don’t sell tequila on Sundays.”

“Damn the luck,” Sands sighed. He uncapped the bottle and drank deeply.

El got in the car and removed the keys from his pocket. He started it up, glanced in the rearview mirror, and pulled onto the road.

Five minutes later, they were outside the Durango city limits, heading west.

***********

Chapter 13: Return to Culiacan

 

They stopped in Mazatlan and took the ferry to La Paz, in Baja.

They could not step on the ferry as they were, however, so first El pulled over at a gas station and bought two large bottles of water and, for lack of anything else, several bandannas from a display by the register. 

It was night now, and a thin crescent moon grinned down from the sky. El returned to the car and opened the back door. He slid in and sat beside Sands.

The agent stirred. He had been in and out of consciousness for most of the trip. “Are we there yet?” Sands slurred.

“Not yet,” El said. “Hold still.” He uncapped the water bottle, poured some of it onto one of the bandannas, and gently wiped at the dried blood on Sands’ face.

Sands hissed in pain, and flinched away. “What are you doing?”

“You can’t go on the ferry looking like this,” El said.

Sands held out his hand. Dried blood encircled his wrist like a gory bracelet, from where the cuffs had cut him. “Let me do it.”

El gave him the water and the rags, and left the car. He stood outside, propped against the driver’s side door, smoking.

Some time later Sands opened the door, leaned outside, and vomited. An empty water bottle dropped to the asphalt and rolled under the car.

El ground his cigarette under his heel. He had been there before, in so much pain that his stomach revolted and he threw up. It was never pleasant. He felt sorry for his friend, but he had done all he could. Sands would only resent him if he tried to do more. 

He gave the agent a long look. Sands had gotten the blood off his face and neck, but some still lingered on his wrists and the backs of his hands. El just shrugged. It was dark out. Nobody would see. “Ready?” he asked.

“Sure,” Sands muttered, and retreated back inside the car.

Half an hour later they were on the ferry, heading west to Baja, and La Paz.

Using the money Lorenzo had given him after the coup, El booked a room in the fanciest hotel in the city. The hotel catered to the rich and famous; its staff were the epitome of discretion. El paid them extra to find a doctor who was just as discreet, and then paid the doctor handsomely, too.

The doctor left at dawn. El ordered breakfast sent to the room. It arrived in steaming silver dishes. He tipped the bellboy well and told him there would be more, if he would let them know if anyone in the city was asking about them. 

They ate breakfast, drew the thick drapes over the windows, and slept.

****

When El woke it was dark outside. He had slept the entire day away. His entire body was sore, but he felt more relaxed than he had in a long time. It was not over with, not by a long stretch, but for a little while at least he could delude himself into thinking they were safe.

He rose from his bed and padded into the bathroom. He took a long shower, and stood under the hot water with his head bowed, drawing deep breaths, letting the steam fill his lungs.

When he emerged from the bathroom, Sands was still sleeping. El stood there, looking down at him for a long time, just to make sure. 

He let himself out of the room and quietly closed the door behind him. He went downstairs to the hotel lobby and spoke to the staff. 

No one had asked about a mariachi, they told him. Or a blind American.

El thanked them, and went back to his room

****

Sands slept for thirty-two hours. 

El was softly plucking at his guitar when the agent finally woke. He stopped what he was doing, and waited.

Sands lay still. He knew El was there, of that El had no doubt. But he did not say anything.

El simply waited. He wanted Sands to speak first. He could not begin to guess how the events of the past few days would have affected the man. He felt that it would be very tactless for him to start talking about something. Not until he knew how Sands was feeling.

As he sat there, waiting, he was suddenly reminded of an old memory, something he had not thought of in many years.

When he was just a little boy, he and brother Cesar had caught a fox. They had named it Zorro, of course. They had built it a cage and fed it all kinds of treats. They had tried petting it, but the fox had snapped at them, even biting Cesar once when the boy was too slow in pulling his hand away.

They had tried so hard, El thought, but no matter what they had done, the fox had not known how to respond to human kindness. It had been wild for too many years.

Feeling sorry for it, he had let the animal go free one afternoon. Cesar had been furious. They had battled each other, rolling around in the dirt as only small boys can do, until their father had forcibly separated them. He had never forgotten the hatred in Cesar’s eyes, though, and the boy’s fury at seeing something he wanted taken away from him.

He sighed. So little changed, over the years. Boys grew into men, and the course of their lives was already set -- and most of them never even knew it. 

The silence stretched out, testing El’s patience. He sat very still, and did not move, the way he had once sat outside that fox’s cage, trying to get the creature to accept him.

At last Sands sighed. “Quit fucking staring at me,” he said.

El smiled. His shoulders slumped with relief. He should have known, he thought. Sands was just fine. “I was beginning to think you were not going to wake up.”

“The idea has its appeal,” Sands said.

“Will you be all right?” El asked. He held his breath, waiting for the inevitable explosion.

Sands did not explode. “Yes,” he said.

El waited a little longer.

“I think,” Sands said, “I found the only CIA agent crazier than me. Looks like I win again.”

El thought of Belinda Harrison, and how awful it had felt to be in close contact with her, and said nothing.

“That guy. Boston. He…” Sands’ voice trailed off. His jaw clenched. He said no more.

And that was it. El nodded to himself, knowing that was as close as Sands would ever come to talking about it. He would be haunted by the memories, but he would bear them alone, through his choice.

But because he almost been privy to one confession, he felt brave enough to say, “Can I ask you a question?” 

“Sure,” Sands said wearily. “What do you want to know?”

He had no idea how Sands was going to react to his question. But he wanted to know. And right now was probably the best chance he would ever have to find out. “When you dream, can you still see?”

Sands did not respond to this for a long time. At last he said, very quietly, “Sometimes.”

****

They arrived in Culiacan two days later.

“Does it bother you to be back?” he asked. He felt rather unsettled, himself, restless and ready to bolt at a moment’s notice. Being back here was not the best thing for him, he decided. He hoped they would not be staying long.

Sands shook his head. “No.” He turned toward El and gave him a humorless smile. “Now, if I could see, that would be a different story.”

This made no sense to El, but he just shrugged and accepted it. 

They went into a cantina to get lunch. It was, in fact, the same cantina where Sands had made his offer to El, the first time they had met. 

The waitress brought their menus and left. El slumped in his chair. More than ever he wished they had not come here. The past suddenly felt very close. 

Too close. 

_Well, frankly, because you have nothing to live for._

Sands had known him for all of thirty seconds, and still the man had seen right through him.

_And in a way, you’re already dead, and Marquez is the one who pulled the trigger. So why not return the favor?_

He remembered the way Sands had looked at him. An intense look, laced with amusement and cynicism. There had been a spark in his dark eyes -- insanity perhaps, but excitement, as well. 

And suddenly El thought -- and was surprised by the weight of the sorrow attached to it -- _Once, just once, I would like to be able to look into his eyes again._

He felt a sharp pang in his chest. So many things had happened since the attempted coup. Most of them things he was not proud of. He tried to remind himself of the good he had done, the lives he had saved, starting with El Presidente’s and ending with Sands’, but those things did not seem to mean much as they should have, sitting here in the place where it all had started.

The waitress came back. “What will you have?”

El placed his order, then pointed to Sands. He made an effort to pull himself away from his dark thoughts. “I know what he wants. He’ll have the _pibil_ , with a tequila and lime,” he said, with a hint of a sarcastic smile. Sands couldn’t see that smile, of course, but he would hear it in El’s voice, and that was what mattered.

The waitress, having no idea what his smile meant, just nodded and went to write this down. 

“I’ll have the steak enchiladas, and a _cerveza_ ,” Sands said to the waitress, holding out his menu. He smiled politely at her, ignoring El.

The waitress shrugged. She crossed out what she had written on her pad, took the menus, and left.

The moment she walked away, Sands turned back to El. With uncanny accuracy, his hand snaked out and grabbed a hank of El’s hair. With his other hand he picked up his knife. It happened so fast, El barely had time to register what was happening. All he knew was that one moment he was sitting in his chair, and an instant later he was suddenly draped across the table by a strong hand anchored in his hair, a dirty kitchen knife hovering a mere inch from his eye.

“You think you know me?” Sands said, his voice low and cold. The knife moved a fraction closer, and El tensed. Sands had no idea how close that blade was to his eye.

Or maybe he had a very good idea.

“For your information, I don’t eat pork anymore. I haven’t, in a very long time. You savvy?”

El nodded, or tried to, with that hand in his hair holding his head still. “I savvy,” he said.

“Good.” Sands released him and laid the knife back on the table. “Now let’s enjoy our lunch.”

When his heart stopped pounding, El found that he felt much better.

****

After lunch they left the cantina. With an unspoken accord, they walked the streets of the village. El noted with satisfaction that the people here seemed happier than they had a year ago. The destruction of the cartel in this area had affected many lives for the better.

All roads in the little village seemed to lead to the city center. It was not long before they found themselves in front of the compound where El Presidente – and Sands -- had nearly died. El gazed up at it impassively. It had seemed so much bigger in his memory, but now that he was here again, he could see it was just another building, like all the rest.

“If you could have your Carolina back, but you had to give up your eyes to have her,” Sands asked, “would you do it?”

El stared at the compound, finding the window Barillo had fallen through. He thought of his beautiful Carolina, and the happiness he had known with her, happiness he would never find again. 

“Yes,” he said.

“No, you wouldn’t,” Sands said. 

****

El saw the kid first. He was playing marbles in the dust by himself. His bike, its basket full of chewing gum, was leaning against the wall of the building behind him. He looked up, saw El Mariachi and Sands, and his whole face lit up. He dropped the marbles and started running for them.

Sands heard those light footsteps. His head turned. He frowned. 

El folded his arms and stood back a little, to give the kid a clear path.

“Señor!” The kid came up barreling up and threw his arms about Sands’ waist, knocking the agent back a few steps.

El watched it happen, the progression of emotions on Sands’ face. First the instinctive repugnance, his hands flying up so he wouldn’t accidentally touch the kid. Then a gradual softening, the hands coming down a little. Finally a crooked smile, a ruffling of the kid’s hair. “Yeah, yeah. Good to see you again too.”

The kid lifted his head and peered up at Sands. His eyes were wide with wonder. “Señor?”

“Figure of speech, kid,” Sands said.

The boy’s face fell. “What happened to you?” he asked in Spanish. He reached up and touched Sands’ face. The bruising was beginning to fade, but there was no mistaking the fact that someone had beaten him only a few days ago.

Sands flinched back. He grabbed the kid’s wrist. “Don’t.” 

“It hurts?” the boy asked, his eyes full of worry.

“Yeah, it hurts,” Sands said.

“What happened?” 

“It’s a long story, kid. You wouldn’t want to hear it, trust me.”

“Where have you been?” 

“Oh,” Sands said vaguely. “Around.” He took a cautious step back, trying to disentangle himself from the kid’s embrace.

El gestured at him, and the boy let go of Sands. “I’m glad you’re back,” he said. “Are you going to stay here?”

“No se,” Sands said. He shrugged.

The boy glanced at El. It was obvious that he knew who El was, and that he respected the mariachi -- but there was also a bit of fear in that respect, and that bothered El. He didn’t want to be the kind of person who frightened children. Especially when that child had no qualms about hugging a man like Sands.

The boy’s eyes suddenly widened. He gasped. “Señor! There were men here. They were asking questions about you!”

“Yeah? When was this?”

“Last summer,” the boy said. “They had lots of questions.”

“What kinds of questions?” Sands asked. He sounded supremely unconcerned.

“They wanted to know where you went, and who was with you.” The boy glanced at El. “They were looking for you.” He scrunched up his face. “Did they do that to you?” He pointed to Sands’ face.

“Well, now, what do you think?” Sands asked. He sounded amused about the whole thing.

The boy did not look remotely amused. He looked frightened, and worried. “You shouldn’t have come back here, Señor!”

“Look, kid. I survived this long. I’ll be just fine.” Sands was rapidly losing the indulgent tone that had marked his voice before.

The kid did not back down. “I don’t want you to get hurt again.”

El stared at the boy. He had never seen such courage in one so young. Or such a kind heart. This boy had never gotten anything from Sands to encourage him, yet he was stubbornly devoted to the agent. It made no sense, but then again, El remembered, logic did not apply to Sands. It never had, and it never would.

“Look,” Sands said in exasperation. “We have places to be. I’m sure you do, too. Go peddle your chewing gum to ignorant American _touristas_.” He waved a hand in the boy’s general direction. “Go on, now.”

The boy gave Sands a narrow look. “Where are you going?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Sands began walking down the street, leaving El and the kid behind.

He didn’t walk very fast though, El saw. He hoped that was because Sands felt bad for yelling at the kid.

He gave the boy a small smile. El wanted to tell him how wonderful he was, how unique in this world where nobody gave a damn about anybody else. He wanted to take the boy by the shoulders and tell him to hold on to his pure heart, no matter what anybody said to him.

Instead he just walked away.

****

Ramirez did not look at all surprised to see them standing at his front door. 

“How ya doing, Jorge?” Sands asked brightly.

Ramirez winced, and moved aside so they could come in.

El frowned. His mood plummeted again. Ramirez looked awful. In the short span of time that had passed since El had seen him last, the retired FBI agent had begun the process of dying in earnest.

The white-and-tan chihuahua tiptoed into the living room. Ramirez picked it up and absently petted the top of its head. “What the hell happened to you?” he asked Sands.

“Long story,” Sands said shortly.

“I suppose you came back to tell me you won. You beat the bad guys.”

“No,” El said, before Sands could speak. He did not want to talk about Belinda Harrison, or the CIA. “We came to give you something. As a thank-you, for everything you have done to help us.”

Ramirez’s brows drew together. “You’re thanking me?”

El pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. “Actually, the United States thanks you.”

Ramirez unfolded the check. His eyes boggled. He looked up at El in astonishment. “What is this?”

“It’s your reward money,” Sands smirked. “Congratulations, Jorge. You deserve it.”

****

They stayed with Ramirez for two weeks.

On a windy Sunday in early May, just after the Cinco de Mayo celebration, El found himself on his hands and knees in the backyard. He was trying to dig a hole and set a wooden post in the ground. Ramirez had a set of brass wind chimes he wanted to hang outside, and El had volunteered to do it.

Sands and Ramirez were sitting on the porch. Despite the afternoon heat, Ramirez had a blanket over his shoulders. Sands was smoking, one hand waving about as he talked away.

El sat back on his heels, laid the trowel on his knee, and watched. He was too far away to hear what was being said, but he could tell Ramirez had little interest in talking; this conversation was very one-sided.

After a while, Sands realized this too. He stubbed out his cigarette. The hand stopped waving. 

His head cocked to one side.

El laid the trowel on the ground and stood up.

On the porch, Sands got up and walked over to Ramirez. He snapped his fingers in front of the retired agent. After a pause, he reached up and touched Ramirez’s face, then slid his fingers down to the man’s throat. He stood there for a long minute.

Finally he dropped his hand back to his side. He turned to face the backyard. He called for El, but El was already there.

****

Ramirez had made all the arrangements ahead of time; everything was taken care of with minimal fuss. The funeral was well-attended, and the church held a wake.

El and Sands did not stay for the wake. They returned to the house. Silence lay heavily in the rooms. Even the dog was gone -- El had given it to a man in the village whom Ramirez had befriended.

They walked out onto the back porch. El sat down in one of the cane chairs and sighed.

It was evening, the coolest part of the day in Mexico. Sands leaned against the porch railing and rolled a cigarette. “You know we can’t stay here.”

“I know,” El said. It was the first time they had talked about it since leaving Durango. He had begun to wonder if they ever would, or if it would remain buried, just another part of their past they never spoke about, like Puerto Vallarta.

“She’s still out there.”

“I know.”

“They won’t stop looking.”

“I know.”

“I’m not giving in.”

“Neither am I.”

****

Two days later a man arrived at the front door. He wore a dark suit and carried a briefcase, and he was sweating heavily.

El opened the door slowly, already suspicious of this visitor.

The man held out hand. “I’m Vicente Garcia,” he said. “I was Jorge Ramirez’s lawyer.”

Silently, El let him in.

Vicente Garcia had come from San Antonio, Texas. Despite his name, he was very American. He looked excruciatingly out of place in Mexico. He sat at the head of Ramirez’s dining room table and cast nervous glances at the two killers seated on either side of him.

“What I have,” he said, “is Mr. Ramirez’s will.”

El sat up a little straighter.

“Most everything is very straightforward,” Garcia said. “Mr. Ramirez left the bulk of his estate to his ex-wife in Texas. However, there were two new provisions added shortly before his death.”

El listened in growing shock as the lawyer announced that Ramirez had left him the house. He was free to do what he wanted with it, but if he was to sell it, he had to give the first choice to Agent Sheldon Sands of the CIA. If neither of them wanted it, they were to sell the house to whom they could and send the money to Ramirez’s ex-wife, address to be provided by one Vicente Garcia in the event that it became necessary.

“And,” Garcia went on, “he has also left the sum of ten thousand dollars to Agent Sands of the CIA.”

Sands made a sound in the back of his throat, but it was hard to tell if he was pleased, or just shocked.

“And there is a letter,” Garcia said. He took out the piece of paper, unfolded it and cleared his throat.

“You bastard,” he began. Immediately he colored bright red. “That’s how it starts,” he apologized hastily, as though he expected to be gunned down for insulting them.

El said nothing. Sands just grinned.

Garcia cleared his throat again, a little louder this time. He held up the letter, the paper rattling slightly in his shaking hand. “You bastard,” he read.

“Inter-agency cooperation, my ass. I was already dying the day we met for lunch. You didn’t know that, of course. You wouldn’t have cared even if you had known. I hated you for that. 

“But in your own twisted way, you gave me a reason to live. A reason to care. The doctors had told me six months. That was four months before we had lunch.

“Killing Dr. Guevara was the best thing I ever did, the thing I am most proud of. I only wish someone had done it sooner, so my partner never had to suffer, nor you.”

El glanced at Sands. The agent said nothing, but El could tell by the set of his jaw that the letter was affecting him.

“And you,” read on the lawyer, giving El a glance. “You came walking into my house, asking me about honor. If you had come two days earlier, I would not have known what honor was. I am glad I was able to look you in the eye, as one man to another.

“I hope you find the peace that has eluded you all your life. Maybe in this place you will find what you have sought for so long.”

Garcia laid the letter down. “That’s all. He didn’t sign it.”

El dropped his head, and stared at the table. He had barely known Ramirez, but he had liked him. Seeing such a man struck down by disease was just one of the many injustices in the world. It made El want to lash out at someone and demand to know why such things were allowed to happen. It made him question his faith in God.

Vicente Garcia left soon after. He gave El his card and said he would call in a few days to find out what they had decided to do about the house.

El saw him out, then returned to the dining room. He sat down at the table again. “What do you think I should do?”

Sands did not miss a beat. “I think you should sell me the house. I’ll buy it from you for one dollar.”

El smiled. “You just received ten thousand dollars. You will only give me one?”

“Take it or leave it,” Sands said.

“Then you will make this your home?” he asked.

Sands nodded. “No more running. I’m through. This is where I’m making my stand.”

El nodded. He could understand that.

“What about you?” Sands asked.

El’s smile faded. “I don’t know,” he said.

****

The next morning he woke up to the sound of a guitar.

He got out of bed and pulled on a pair of black pants that lacked the ornamental chains of his mariachi outfit. He followed the sound through the house, and found Sands on the back porch.

The agent was sitting on one of the cane chairs. The guitar El had given him was on his lap. He would play a few notes, then stop to tune the instrument, feeling where he was through touch. After a few false starts, he began playing a song.

El did not recognize the music. The song was vaguely Spanish in flavor, but not overly so. The notes were clear, and sorrowful. He thought the song was telling a story, but if so, it was one he could not understand. Almost, but not quite.

Sands stopped playing. He looked like he was trying to decide whether he should be pissed off that El had heard him using the guitar. Then he shrugged, opting to remain neutral. “They’ll be here soon.”

El nodded. He didn’t ask how Sands had known he was there. “I know.”

“Will you stay here?” Sands asked. He began playing the song again, as though he had just said nothing of consequence.

El breathed deep. He hadn’t realized it, but he had been waiting for this ever since Ramirez’s death. 

Waiting to be asked.

He nodded. “I will,” he said.

*************

Chapter 14: A Gathering Storm

 

The summer passed.

El sold him the house for one dollar. The lawyer from Texas balked at drawing up paperwork over so ludicrous a sale, but in the end he did as he was told. On his second visit Sands had pulled him aside and very quietly told him that he thought El was insane. The best thing to do, he had whispered into the guy’s ear, was to play along with whatever El wanted.

Garcia had gulped, and nodded. “Thank you for warning me,” he had said.

Sands had patted his shoulder. “Any time.”

The money Ramirez left him was placed in several accounts. Every Sunday he made El go into town and buy a newspaper, and then read him the financial news. He told El where to distribute the money, and the calls were made on Monday morning. He was good at making money -- by the end of summer he had nearly doubled the ten thousand dollars.

El marveled at his ability to find money where none had been before. Sands just shrugged. He knew his luck would run out eventually; he had been out of touch with the rest of the world for too long. Sooner or later his knowledge of world markets would be depleted. He just hoped he would have made enough money before that happened.

Money. He had always had it, and being without it made him feel suffocated. Money was essential if you wanted control. Some days the thought of the money he had lost when the CIA froze his bank accounts nearly made him choke. All those years of careful embezzlement, small deposits that no one would notice, watching the money slowly add up… it was all gone. 

Thinking about it was enough to send him flying into a rage. But that summer, a strange thing happened. Whenever he felt pissed or scared or depressed or just plain psychotic, he forced himself to hold back. Often this took more effort than it seemed worth, but in the end he always did it. Every time he wanted to release all the anger and pent-up crap building inside him, and fling it at El with all his might, he made himself remember one thing.

El had come back for him.

The mariachi could have left him in Durango, to die a slow death at the hands of men like Boston. But El had come back.

When there had been no reason to, El had come back.

So, with a tremendous effort, Sands kept his cool that summer. He smiled and acted like he was fine, and at night he lay awake in bed, shaking with barely-restrained fury. He dreamed of walking out the back door, into the backyard and beyond -- walking until he had left the house far behind and he was alone and then throwing his head back and screaming until he had no voice left. Some nights the temptation was so strong he had to go sit in the corner until it had passed, and he could smile again without it looking like a silent scream.

El, of course, suspected none of this. Which was just fine with Sands. 

The kid came around often. He had a name, but Sands always just called him Chiclet. El didn’t think that was very funny, but the kid loved it. He said when he grew up he was going to make people call him Señor Chiclet. Sands approved of goals like this one.

The kid was learning to play the guitar. It amused Sands that the kid wanted to learn from him, not from the great El Mariachi. He had endless fun at El’s expense because of this, much to El’s annoyance. He never said anything, though, about how much he enjoyed the lessons. Chiclet was the first person in his entire life who had accepted him without question, who had never demanded anything from him. He berated himself for it all the time, but the truth was, he liked hanging out with the kid. The hours he spent with Chiclet were the closest he came to feeling normal during that terrible summer.

One day he let the kid remove his sunglasses. He heard Chiclet start to cry, then a small hand touched his face. He sat still under that innocent touch, even when the kid unknowingly hurt him by coming too close to the sensitive nerve endings which were all that remained of his eyes. He had barely put the sunglasses back on when he was enveloped in a sticky hug. Instinctively he recoiled from the embrace, but when Chiclet backed away and he was alone again, he found himself almost wishing he had returned the hug. 

He still refused to show El how to play slide guitar. He suspected El knew how anyway, that the mariachi had taught himself during the year they had been apart. He thought El only asked him to make him feel useful, and that pissed him off. He didn’t need anybody’s charity, even if it was only over some stupid guitar lessons.

From time to time, then with increasing frequency as the summer wore on, rumors reached them, talk of a subtle shift in power in Mexico. The cartels were waging war among themselves, fighting over the territory that had been ruled first by Barillo and his underling Bucho, and then by Ramon Escalante. Cartel members began to appear in Culiacan. There were mysterious disappearances, shooting deaths.

And then one day, Chiclet showed up with the news that a woman had moved into the village. An American woman.

A blond American woman.

And just like that, everything changed. The calendar said it was late August, but for Sands, that long horrible summer was finally over.

****

The next day El went into town to check things out. He was only gone an hour. When he came back, his step was slow and measured, a sure sign that he was pissed. “It’s her,” he said.

Sands took a long drag of his cigarette. “What the hell is she doing here?”

“I can bring her in,” El offered.

“No,” Sands said. He had no idea what Belinda Harrison was up to, but he was going to find out his own way. If she had not attacked them already, she was obviously expecting them to approach her, and he had made it a point in life never to do what was expected of him. “I don’t play by anyone else’s rules,” he said.

For two weeks there was no other word. Harrison lived in the village, and bothered no one. She shopped at the market, ate at the cantina, and went home alone. There were rumors that a man was with her, but no one had seen this man. Even El, who followed her home several times, could see no signs of anyone else at her house.

“I don’t like it,” the mariachi said. “She knows we are here. Why is she waiting?”

“To keep us off guard,” Sands said. 

“I should have killed her,” El said.

This surprised him. He had long believed it himself, but he had never expected El to agree with him. He had been under the impression that El didn’t like to kill unnecessarily.

El sighed. “We will never stop running, will we?”

He thought this one over. He had bought this house knowing full well he would probably never really call it his home. The childhood house in Indiana; the apartments, first in Chicago and then in DC; they all felt a million miles away, places he had never truly visited, except in hazy, half-remembered dreams. He would never have a real home again. 

“No,” he said.

“Did you know,” El said, “I knew an American once. He was a very good friend to me. I thought of him as a brother. He tried to get me to stop chasing after Bucho. He tried to make me see how empty my quest for vengeance was, but I would not listen to him.”

Sands said nothing, refraining from uttering the sarcastic comment that had leapt to his tongue the moment El spoke. He had actually heard this story before – several times.

“I will call Lorenzo and Fideo,” El said. “If she is laying low in the village this long, she must be planning something. We will need help.”

“What?” Sands sat up a little straighter. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No,” El said, very seriously.

“You actually think your mariachi buddies are going to give a damn about me?”

“I know they won’t,” El said. He stood up. “But they give a damn about me.” He walked into the house, leaving Sands on the porch.

****

The mariachis arrived two days later. El went into town to meet them and bring them back to the house.

Sands was standing on the porch when they arrived. He had planned this very carefully. He was at a distinct disadvantage when it came to meeting people, so he took control of the situation as best he could. Today he stood at the rail, with his back to them, so they could not see his face. Not yet. Let them wonder what he looked like for a little while longer.

He could hear them long before they reached the back porch. One of them wore a jacket with a jangling zipper. The other had a loose heel on one boot, and it clunked when he walked. Sands could have shot them each a dozen times before they even got near him, just based on their clothing alone.

They were talking amongst themselves. Or rather, El was talking.

Sands listened in astonishment. El Mariachi was talking. Not only that, he was laughing. In the time it took for El to walk through the house and step out onto the porch, Sands heard him say more in one breath than in all the time he had known the man.

His hands gripped the porch railing tightly. This was not, after all, unexpected. El had a history with those two mariachis. They had shared experiences and stories. They had known each other for many years. Hell, they had probably gone to Mariachi College together.

Still, a hot dart slipped into his chest, making him scowl fiercely. Christ, was he actually jealous? 

He sighed. It would seem that he was. This was just great. This was all he needed. Like he wasn’t already nervous and feeling like shit.

The screen door opened. El walked out onto the porch. The two mariachis stopped just behind him.

“That’s him?” asked one. He sounded short, dumb, and ugly. He also sounded slightly drunk and smelled of booze. “You took on an entire cartel with _him_?”

“I knew you were reckless, but holy shit,” said the other. This one sounded taller, marginally less dumb, and just as ugly as his buddy.

 _I do not believe this_ , said the voice in his head. He had tried so hard over the summer --really he had -- to ignore that voice, but now it was back with a vengeance, forcing him to listen to it. _You really are jealous. What the fuck’s the matter with you?_

He gritted his teeth. So he was jealous. So what?

 _I give up_ , said the voice, throwing up its hands in exasperation. _You’re a lost cause, buddy._

“Fuck you,” he whispered under his breath.

El said his name. Not, thankfully, those two most hated syllables in all the English language.

Just, “Sands.”

He stood a little straighter – _fuck ‘em all_ \-- and slowly turned around. Every day he was forced out onto the stage and under the spotlight, so really this was just another performance, but this one was different. This had to be one of his best. Nothing else would satisfy.

He took a slow breath through his nose. Everyone always worried about what he could hear. No one ever stopped to wonder what he could smell, or realized how he used scents to help him understand what was happening around him.

Which was not really surprising, considering that he was surrounded by fuckwits.

“So,” he said brightly, “which one of you fine gentlemen has the bottle?”

In the silence that followed, he could practically see their stupid faces agape with astonishment. He smirked a little, and leaned back on the porch railing. “Well?”

“I do,” said the dumber mariachi.

“Good. Would you be so kind, as to hold it up?”

“Hold it up?”

“Yes,” Sands drawled. “Hold it up. I want to see what you’re drinking.”

Now the silence was positively charged with stupid bewilderment. Sands grinned, unable to help himself. 

The dangling zipper on the mariachi’s jacket made a small sound as the man raised his arm.

Chains jingled as El took a prudent step away.

Sands cocked his head. He wanted more than anything to announce what was in that bottle, but he didn’t dare. If he didn’t get it right, he would ruin everything.

“Wait a minute,” said the dumb mariachi, in a tone of slowly dawning realization. “You can’t see what I’m drinking. You’re blind.”

“That’s right,” Sands said. “I am.” He drew his pistol and shot the bottle right out of the mariachi’s hand.

Glass shattered. Cheap wine – he knew the label, now that he could smell it better -- sprayed everywhere. The short, dumb mariachi dropped the remains of the bottle and did a funny little jig of terror. The other mariachi cursed quite loudly in Spanish.

El did not move, but Sands knew he was smiling.

“You could have shot my hand off!” shouted the dumb mariachi.

“I could have,” Sands agreed, and put his pistol back in its holster.

“Jesus God,” said the other mariachi. “What a shot! Were you a sniper?”

The question startled Sands. No one had ever asked him that before. Perhaps this one wasn’t a complete fuckwit. “No,” he said. “I was too young for Vietnam. But I was top marksman at the Academy. You must be Lorenzo.”

“Yeah,” Lorenzo said. Clothing rustled and a porch board squeaked underfoot, indicating he had leaned forward to hold his hand out for a shake.

Sands did not shake hands. He turned his head toward the dumb mariachi. “And you are Fideo.”

“Wow,” said Fideo. “You’ll have to show me how you do that.”

****

That night he was treated to an impromptu concert. The three mariachis brought out their instruments and played. Chiclet sat in one corner, clapping time and singing random scraps of lyrics.

Sands sat by himself in the doorway to the porch, the screen door propped open behind him. They had asked if he played, and he had said no. He had waited with bated breath for El to deny this, but El had kept his secret. Which was good. If El had talked, he would have been forced to kill the man. So he felt a grudging gratitude to El for keeping quiet. 

That pissed him off. He didn’t want to be grateful to El for anything.

“Señor Sands.” Chiclet tugged on his sleeve, making him jump with surprise. He hadn’t even heard the kid come up to him. “Why won’t you play?”

“Because I’m not one of them,” Sands said in annoyance. He had always hated parties. He didn’t like the sweaty clumps of people, the loud music, the bowls of food where everybody put their hands. He much preferred quiet settings, dark corners, and one-on-one conversations where he could control what was being said.

And he had had enough. All summer long he had been nice and sweet and polite, and a man could only take so much. This afternoon, he had reached the end of his patience. He had felt it snap the moment that glass bottle had shattered in Fideo’s hand. The voice in his head had been talking non-stop since that moment, driving him crazy, reminding him that he was crazy, and wasn’t it high time he did something about it?

“I think you play better than they do,” Chiclet said loyally.

Sands sighed. He knew the kid was just trying to make him feel better, but that sort of patent lie just pissed him off even more. “What are you still doing here? It’s late. Go fuck off, go on home. Don’t you have school tomorrow?”

The kid laughed. “It’s Saturday!” He skipped off. His feet left the floor as one of the mariachis caught his hands and swung him around. His childish laughter rose into the night air.

El approached him next, and he scowled. Goddamnit, were they all going to bug him tonight?

“Before we came back here,” El said, “we went by Harrison’s house. She was at home, sleeping. We saw no one else.”

“I don’t think there is anyone else,” Sands said. Out on the porch, Chiclet and the mariachis were dancing, something involving a lot of stomping around. They were giving him a headache. “She may be spreading that rumor herself, just to make us think there is.”

“Tomorrow we will go down to the village again,” El said. “We will wait for her to leave, and then we will enter her house. We will find out once and for all what she is hiding, and what her plan is.”

“You won’t find anything in the house,” Sands cautioned. “She’s better than that.”

“We will know for sure tomorrow,” El said. “Will you be all right by yourself?”

“For Christ’s sake!” Sands snapped. “I don’t need a fucking baby-sitter. Besides, Chiclet will keep me company.”

El clapped a hand on his shoulder. Intellectually he knew it was just a friendly gesture, but at the moment it was the worst possible thing El could have done. He had told El time and again not to touch him, but the man never listened. This was the last straw.

Every ugly thought and feeling he had repressed all summer rose up with a wild howl, demanding to be heard. Snarling, he jerked away from El. “Get away from me. Go play another fucking love song to your dead wife.”

A long, long silence drew out. Then El said, very coldly, “I am sorry for you.”

Incredulous, he stood up so he was toe to toe with the mariachi. “ _You_ are sorry for _me_?” The restless energy that always coincided with his madness came over him, making him practically bounce. He wanted El to hit him, so he would have an excuse to hit back.

“Because you have never known love,” El said.

“Oh please!” Sands scoffed. If El was trying to make him feel bad, this was most definitely not the way to do it. “There is no such thing as love. It’s a made-up word for a made-up feeling that people sing about in country songs -- or mariachi songs, if you prefer -- and write bad poetry about. And in the end you’re left feeling like shit. I mean, look at you.” He waved a hand at the mariachi. “You of all people ought to know that. Look what happened to you after Carolina died.”

El hit him. He had expected it – hell, he had even wanted it -- but the blow still caught him unprepared. His head snapped to the side, pain flaring in the barely-healed injury to his cheek. 

Without hesitating, he hit right back, sending El reeling. He felt the old familiar ache in his knuckles that came from striking someone in the face.

Inside his head, the voice of his madness cheered. _Get him! Show him! Show them all!_

Out on the porch, the music came to an abrupt halt.

“No!” Chiclet ran forward, placing himself between the two men. He stood with his back to Sands, and despite his rage, Sands could still feel slightly touched that the kid was willing to defend him against a man like El Mariachi.

This did not, however, mean he was any less pissed. “Look at you!” he shouted. “You can’t even stand to hear her name! She messed you up, my friend. So don’t tell me that love is good. Because I’m not buying it.” He paused, then added in a snide tone, “Still dream about her death every night?”

El’s voice dripped with fury. “Probably about as often as you dream about losing your eyes.”

He gave El a chill smile. “Touché. However, I only dream about that once a week now. I guess you can’t say you’re as lucky.”

“You,” El said in disgust, “are a piece of shit.” 

“Yeah?” He grinned, the arrogant grin that everyone had always hated, the one that hid what he was truly feeling. “Newsflash for you, El. So are you. I’m just the only one of us honest enough to admit it.”

He put his hands on the kid’s shoulders, pushing him out of the way. “Go home, Chiclet.” He turned around to go inside, then paused.

“All of you, get the fuck off my porch,” he said. “This is my house. No more parties.”

He went inside.

****

Later, El came to him. “I am not going to apologize to you.”

He was sitting in the kitchen, smoking. Normally he didn’t smoke in the house, but tonight he didn’t give a shit.

“Well, good,” he snapped. “I’d hate to think we were actually getting along again.”

El was silent for a long moment. Then there came the sounds of chair legs being scraped across the floor. El sat down. “Why do you make everything so difficult?” he sighed.

“Oh, is this another session with El Mariachi, premiere psychologist?” he asked. “Shouldn’t I lay down on the couch while you ask me about my mother?”

El said nothing. He knew the mariachi was waiting for him to answer the question, so he folded his arms, refusing to speak.

The voice inside, however, wanted to talk. No surprise there. Hell, all it ever did was talk. _It’s all we have!_ the voice shouted. _We have to do it. There’s no other way_

Then, quietly, slyly, _They don’t understand that, but I do._

“It’s all I have,” he muttered under his breath.

“That is not true,” El said.

Shit. He curled his hands into fists hard enough to hurt. He was really going to have to work on not saying things like that out loud. “If you tell me that I have lots of things in my life, but that if I can’t see them I really am blind, I’m going to strangle you with your own guitar strings,” he threatened.

“But you do,” El said.

“Fuck you!” he shouted. “You don’t know what I’ve got! You don’t know anything about me!”

“Yes, I do.”

“Yeah? What do you know about me?”

“I know that you’re scared. I know you’re angry. I know you’ve spent all summer fighting your insanity, and it’s killing you.”

The utter audacity of this statement took his breath away.

And then it hit him. El had known all along. All this time he had thought he was being so clever, and fooling the mariachi. But El had known.

Abruptly the fires of his rage were doused. He felt very cold all over. 

The voice inside said, _Listen to him. He’s right. You can’t beat me. And you know it._

It was true. Lord knew he had tried, all summer long. But some things in life were just not meant to be. And apparently reacquainting himself with sanity was one of them.

_Well, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em._

He stood up, drawing his gun and aiming it at El’s head. “Wrong again, fuckmook. I _embrace_ my insanity.” He pulled the trigger.

Footsteps came running from the hall. The swinging door was shoved open. “What the hell...?”

“Go back to sleep,” El said. “We are just talking.”

“Doesn’t look like talking to me,” Lorenzo said.

Sands did not move the pistol, but he growled, “You want me to ‘just talk’ with you?”

Lorenzo left the kitchen.

“Do you want to know how close you came?” El asked. The mariachi sounded a bit breathless, which was good, but not good enough.

His hand began to shake. He didn’t need El to tell him. He had moved the gun infinitesimally at the last second; he knew he had missed El by less than an inch.

“You don’t know me,” he said again. To his horror, the words came out small and petulant, and not at all the resounding declaration he had meant them to be.

El stood up. “Whose fault is that?” he asked. He walked out of the kitchen.

The swinging door flapped back and forth gently. El’s jangling footsteps receded, then were gone.

Oh Christ, he was far gone. A year ago he would not have hesitated to shoot El. Hell, even three months ago he probably would have done it. And tonight he had meant to do it. There was no doubt of that. But something had prevented him from doing it. Something he could not even identify, the same something that had battled so unsuccessfully against his madness.

A something that did not want to go quietly.

“Stop it,” he whispered. “Just stop it. Both of you. I can’t take this anymore.”

The voice in his head just laughed nastily.

Sands gripped the gun in both hands and jammed the muzzle under his chin. His hands were shaking so badly he could barely work one finger around the trigger.

 _Do it!_ cheered the voice of his madness. _Go on, do it! Pull the trigger!_

He pushed up, forcing his head back.

 _Do it_ , the voice whispered. _You know you want to. What are you waiting for?_

His finger tightened about the trigger.

In the end, what stopped him wasn’t the thought of what Chiclet would do, or what El would say. It was the memory of Fideo saying, “You took on an entire cartel with _him_?”

Because, by God, the fuckwit was right. 

He had destroyed an entire drug cartel, with the help of only one man. 

He had done that. No one else.

Slowly his finger uncurled from the trigger.

_Come on, you pussy!_

“No,” he snarled. He jerked the pistol away and laid it on the table.

He began to tremble all over. He slumped forward, bowing his head into his hands.

No way. He was not going to take the coward’s way out. Fuck them all. If he was going to go out, it wouldn’t be like this. Belinda Harrison was out there. The CIA was out there. Every drug cartel in Mexico was out there. Plenty of chances to die, equal opportunities all around. 

He drew in a deep breath, and stood up straight. He reached for the gun, found it, and put it back in its holster. 

He walked from the kitchen and turned left, heading for his bedroom. He told himself that he would turn in at the doorway, he would, he was not going to keep walking, out of the house and into the backyard and beyond, he was not.

Of course he was going to stay here, because where else did he have to go?

***********

Chapter 15: Thunder in the Air

 

Christ, his head hurt. Wincing with the pain, he opened his eyes.

She was standing over him, a little blurry, but all there. “Sorry, baby. I told you I wasn’t interested in your schemes.”

Ajedrez.

Pure horror blasted through him. No! It wasn’t possible.

But they were all there. One big, shiny, happy family. Barillo in the corner, covered in bloody bandages. The goons with their dark suits and sunglasses. Ajedrez, she of the big tits and the traitor’s smile.

Dr. Guevara and his shiny tools.

“No,” he moaned. Not again. Dear God, not again. He couldn’t go through all that again. 

“Fortunately for you,” Barillo said, “you have only seen things. We must make sure that does not happen again.”

“No,” he pleaded. “Just shoot me. Please.”

Dr. Guevara came forward. The drill whirred into life.

“No!” he cried in terror. “No!” He tossed his head wildly, but they grabbed him and held him down, so he could not move.

Ajedrez was laughing. He stared at her, pleading with her with his eyes -- while he still had them -- to stop it from happening. 

And as he watched, she changed. She shrunk a little, filled out more in the waist and legs. Her hair shortened and became blond. 

Belinda Harrison laughed down at him. “Smile, Sheldon! You’ve just won an all-expenses paid trip to hell. Congratulations.” 

Beside her, Boston was grinning. He was holding up a pistol. The barrel was slimed with blood. “Let me have him next,” he said.

Belinda kissed his cheek. “Whatever you say, sugarbutt,” she said. She turned back to Sands. “And look, I got you a going-away present.” Laughing gaily, she gestured to Dr. Guevara.

The doctor leaned in. The drill touched his eye. His world exploded in pain and darkness. 

Sands screamed himself awake. He clawed at his face for a little, until the smooth feel of the sunglasses beneath his fingers reassured him enough for his heart to stop racing.

He slumped back in his chair. Fuck.

“Señor?” Chiclet. He had forgotten the kid was there. “Esta bien?” The kid sounded worried.

“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered. 

The porch boards creaked as Chiclet got up and walked over to him. A hand was laid on his arm. “I’m sorry,” the kid said.

The horror of the dream was still fresh, so Sands did not shake the hand off, as he normally would have. “It’s all right, kid,” he said. “Not your fault.”

Chiclet sniffled, and now Sands did pull away, in alarm. He hated it when the kid cried. Most of the time he was responsible, somehow, and he hated the feelings of guilt that accompanied the kid’s tears.

If El had been there, he would have found a way to blame the kid’s tears on the mariachi. But right now he was alone at the house with Chiclet. Around mid-morning, El had taken Lorenzo and Fideo into the village to help him spy on Harrison. Sands did not miss them. He was glad they were gone. He didn’t think he could have endured another hour with El’s mariachi buddies. As for El... Well, El could go fuck himself, for all Sands cared. After the musicians had left the house, he had sat there for hours thinking of ways he could kill El without alerting the neighbors.

“Señor?”

It was late afternoon now, and they were sitting on the front porch. It was windy out, and the weather report was predicting rain and storms. A hurricane was off the coast, and while their tiny village was expected to receive only a glancing blow, the people were still worried. Sands thought El was a fool to go into town on a day like this, but he had kept his mouth shut -- his desire to see El gone had outweighed his need to make El feel like an idiot.

While he had been sleeping, the wind had grown stronger. The temperature had begun to drop. The storm was nearly here. It was time to go inside and start closing the windows and check on their supply of batteries for the radio.

He might have felt worried about being left alone at the house, but for Chiclet. The kid had arrived somewhere around lunchtime, and showed no signs of wanting to leave just yet.

Which was a good thing. The kid was the perfect early-warning system.

“Señor! There’s a woman out there,” the kid said urgently. 

“Really?” Sands laid his hands on the guitar in his lap, frowning to feel it. He did not remember playing it earlier, and he wondered how it had gotten there. “What does she look like?”

“Rubia,” said the kid. _Blond._

“Is she alone?”

“Sí.”

“Does she have a gun?”

“No se.”

“Okay. Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to get on your bike and ride into town. Rapido. Find El and tell him about the woman. Tell him...” Sands hesitated. “Tell him I’m still standing.”

“Señor?”

“Just do it!” he snapped. “Ahora!” _Now!_

The kid took off. 

Sands reached under the guitar and found the gun resting on his lap. He didn’t remember putting that there, either, but that wasn’t the point. He was just glad it was there. He slid it forward a little, but kept it hidden, beneath the guitar. 

The wind gusted a little higher, blowing his hair – longer now, after the summer – into his face. Not that it mattered. He didn’t have to worry about anything messing up his vision anymore, did he?

He aimed at the footsteps he could now hear, and put on a bright, sunny smile. “Hello, bitch.”

Her step did not falter. “Did the kid tell you I was here?”

She was to his right, and ahead of him. Standing on the fourth step leading up to the porch, if he guessed correctly. He shook his head. “No. All blind people have extra-sensory sonar. Didn’t you know that?” His heart was racing; every nerve felt alive. He had missed this, he realized. He might bitch and moan about having to keep running, but the truth was, he liked running. Staying in one place for too long just wasn’t interesting.

Living _la vida loca_ wasn’t always fun, but it sure was exciting. This was what he had missed all summer. This, right here, right now.

Harrison mounted one of the steps. Sands slid the gun out a little more, so she could see it. “I think that’s far enough,” he said.

“Don’t you want to know why I’m here?” she asked.

“Not really,” he said. “The real question is, why I shouldn’t kill you.”

“Oh, come on,” she scoffed. “You would have done the same thing, if you had been in my position.”

This gave him pause. “Okay,” he said. “I probably would have. What’s your point?”

“I came to see you so we could talk,” she said. The wooden porch creaked as she took another step up.

Sands cocked the gun. “Move again,” he said, “and I will shoot.”

“The CIA doesn’t want to bring you in anymore,” she said. “Did you know that?”

He was shocked. Of all the things he had expected her to say, this had not been one of them. “Why? Why not?

“Because.” She was smiling – he could hear it in her voice. “They think you are dead.”

A myriad of responses to this all went through his mind at once, ranging from jubilant to suspicious. “What? Why? Why would they think that?”

“Because I told them so,” she said. Her voice became slower, a mournful dirge. “Poor Sheldon,” she lamented. “He always was so unstable. We really should have seen it coming. But we felt so sorry for him once we had him back in custody that we didn’t watch him as closely as we should have. He committed suicide, rather than be taken back home.”

She giggled. “The last I heard, there was talk of giving you a medal posthumously.”

Sands shook his head. “You’ve lost your mind,” he said flatly.

He wondered when it had happened. Maybe those hours locked in the trunk of her car had done it. Or maybe she had already been on the slippery slope of insanity long before then. and her fury at his escape had pushed her over the edge.

 _Maybe_ , the voice in his head piped up, _she knew all along about Barillo. She always did hate me. Maybe she knew what would happen to me if they got me, and that’s why she didn’t send help when I called her._

_Maybe she wanted this to happen to me._

He felt cold all over. No. No way. Even he wouldn’t have condemned anyone to this dark hell. Surely she couldn’t have.

But she had. He knew she had. It was there in her voice, the smug satisfaction of a job well done. She had thrown him to the wolves, and she had laughed as she did it – just like she had in his dream.

He wondered now why he had not seen it before. Belinda Harrison was the one who had told him about it all in the first place. Contrary to popular belief, he had not set up the coup. He had merely taken advantage of what had seemed like a golden opportunity.

He could remember it so clearly. She had refused to talk about it over the phone, so he had made the trip to Mexico City to see her, cursing the whole way. They had met for lunch at an expensive restaurant where the tablecloths were real linen and the pork tasted like shit. She had left early, sticking him with the check.

But first, over the meal, she told him everything he needed to know. “We’ve gotten word that something is going down in Culiacan later this year.”

“Really?” he drawled, utterly bored. He was adding up the miles he had traveled today in his head. Later tonight he would fill out an expense report, padding it with an extra 50 miles, and then e-mail it to Langley. With luck he would have a check within a week. 

Belinda Harrison was wearing a white tank top that showed off her tanned arms and her breasts. “A coup d’etat,” she said. She took a drink from her soda, and looked at him over the rim of the glass. “Arranged by one of the cartels.”

This piqued his interest. He sat up a little. “Who?”

“Armando Barillo.”

“No kidding.” He had been following Barillo’s operations for a year, ever since being posted to this godforsaken country. There had been vague promises made for his future, if he could bag a cartel. Bonuses and promotions -- possibly even the title of Station Chief. (He knew this would never happen – he was brilliant and a good spy, but he was too unstable. He knew it, and they knew it, but it still pleased him to hear the talk.)

More importantly, however, Belinda Harrison had heard the talk. He wondered why she was telling him about the coup, and the cartel’s involvement. If he took down Barillo, he would have her job.

Maybe, he thought, she just wanted to leave Mexico. She bitched about the place often enough. Maybe she was ready to hand him her job.

He leaned back in his chair. “So you want me to stop it?”

“What the hell do you think?” she asked. “The current president has done more for this country than his last three predecessors combined. There’s no way we can let him be assassinated.”

Sands made up his mind right then and there that El Presidente would die.

“Who will take over?”

“General Marquez,” Harrison said. She pushed a thin manila file across the table. “Everything we know about him is in there. We think Barillo is going to pay him twenty million pesos for the coup.”

Twenty million pesos. A man with twenty million pesos could pretty much do what he pleased, Sands thought. He could disappear quite easily in a city like, say, Puerto Vallarta.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

She smiled. “I knew I could count on you.”

But she _had_ known, Sands thought now. She had known exactly what he would do when she told him about the coup. She had known he would get caught. She had set him up, right from the start. And he had fallen into her trap without even seeing the noose as it tightened about his neck.

She had planned it well, he had to give her credit. But she hadn’t counted on one thing:

Barillo hadn’t killed him.

He began to tremble with rage. 

_Oh, you bitch. You fucking bitch. I never deserved this!_

_You did this to me. I can’t kill Ajedrez again, but you’re the next best thing._

_You should never have come here._

_You’re going to die today._

_I’m going to fucking kill you._

“It bothers you that I’m insane?” she asked, laughing. “Why Sheldon, I thought you’d say, ‘Welcome to the club.’ Maybe offer me a gift basket or something.”

“Not quite,” he said.

He had never felt saner in all his life.

A gust of wind kicked up, sending dust and dirt into the walls of the house. Sands listened hard, and sure enough he heard Harrison take another step onto the porch, using the wind as a cover.

He put a bullet into the stair where he judged her foot to be. “Stop right there.”

“I quit, you know,” she said. “After your suicide. I went back to DC for my debriefing, and turned in my badge and my gun. It was a very sad occasion.”

“Funny, you don’t sound too broken up over it.”

“That’s because I’ve found something new to think about.”

“Oh? What’s that?” Sands asked.

“How much I’m going to enjoy killing you,” said Belinda Harrison.

He heard the distinctive sound of a gun being drawn, and then, from far off, he heard the last thing in the world he had expected.

Chiclet.

“Señor!” the kid shouted. “Run! She has a gun!”

Christ. The kid had taken off, all right, but only as far as the end of the driveway. A ditch lined the edge of the property, running parallel to the street, for catching excess rainwater. The kid had run away like he had been told, but then he had hidden in the ditch, so he could see what was happening at the house. Stubborn as ever, he had stayed behind in order to help his friend.

That loyalty had just gotten him killed.

Sands heard Belinda Harrison turn. Before he could even start to cry out, a single gunshot split the afternoon. Chiclet let out a loud scream, then was silent.

She had shot Chiclet.

Sands threw the guitar to the floor and stood up. She had shot Chiclet. That single thought stood out above the panicky rage buzzing about in his mind. _She had shot Chiclet._

“You bitch. He was just a kid.” He gave her a thin smile. “I’m going to fucking kill you for that.”

“Why, Sheldon,” Belinda laughed. “Listen to you! Sounding like you actually give a damn about someone other than yourself. It’s almost enough to make people think you’ve changed.”

“Fuck you,” he snarled, trying not to envision the kid with his brains blown out.

“But we know better, don’t we?” she said sweetly. Then her voice hardened. “Put down your weapon.”

“I don’t think so,” Sands said. He gave her a nasty grin. He began sidling toward the front door, keeping his gun aimed at her. “Because right now I know where you are. The only problem is, I can’t see you and what you’re doing. So if I even _think_ I hear you getting up to no good, I will shoot you. And I won’t miss. Savvy?”

He could feel the door at his back now. He reached behind him with his left hand, fumbling for the doorknob. “I’m going inside, Bel. If you follow me in, I guarantee you it will be the last thing you ever do.”

_Follow me in, you bitch! Come and get me. I’m gonna give you something you’ve never even dreamed of._

Chiclet liked ice cream. There was an ice cream scoop in the drawer next to the kitchen sink. It was cruder than the elegant tools Dr. Guevara had used on him, but it would do.

It would do quite well.

“There’s nowhere for you to go, Sheldon,” she said. “Drop your weapon.”

“I don’t think so,” he said, and shot her, just as the first roll of thunder rumbled overhead.

He twisted the doorknob behind him and shoved the door open. He tumbled into the house, feeling a savage burst of pleasure at hearing Belinda Harrison cry out with pain and stagger back into the porch railing. Then he slammed the door shut, and he could not hear her anymore.

He turned to run, intending to head straight for the kitchen.

And tripped right over the outstretched foot of the man who had been inside the house the whole time, waiting for him.

He landed hard, facedown. The gun was knocked from his hand. He heard it skitter away from him, and immediately he reached out, trying to find it.

“Oh, no, you don’t.” The man who had tripped him dropped down, pinning him with a knee in the small of his back. Hands grabbed his arms, roughly wrenching them behind him. One hand twisted his wrists up behind him, and the other pushed down on the back of his head, grinding his face into the carpet.

The front door opened. Belinda Harrison walked in. “Get him,” she snapped. “The fucker shot me.”

“Oh, I got him,” said the man.

Sands went very still. He knew that voice. It had a strong Boston accent, and it sounded very smug.

And here was the thing. He had never told El this, but all summer, he had wondered. He had remembered what happened in the tunnel under the ranch house in Durango, and he had wondered.

He had buried the scorpion dagger in Boston’s chest. Boston had fallen. He had knelt down to retrieve the knife, and when he did, Boston had whispered, “You bastard.”

He had heard the accent, and known immediately who it was. “Well, hello, Boston. You sick fuck.”

He had pulled the knife free, taken Boston’s gun, and shot the two soldiers. But he had never checked on Boston again, and made sure the man was dead. He had been having enough trouble staying upright and conscious at that point, without adding another problem to the list.

But he should have checked. All summer he had kicked himself for it. He had told himself he was just being paranoid, but the worry would not go away.

Now he knew why. On some level, he had known. Boston was still alive.

“Hey there, Boston,” he said now, hoping he didn’t sound as afraid as he felt. “So...didn’t want to stay dead, huh?”

Boston leaned in. “You didn’t come close to killing me, you asshole.”

“Well, I won’t make that mistake twice,” Sands said, and was proud of himself for how steady his voice sounded.

Belinda Harrison knelt beside him. He heard a faintly plastic sound he could not identify, then a needle pierced his neck.

Terror shot through him. “No!” he yelled, thrashing under Boston’s weight, fighting the hands that held him down. Needles meant unconsciousness, and waking up tied down and helpless. 

And he remembered – hell, how could he forget? – that Boston had wanted to stick a needle in his ear, and trap him in a prison composed not only of blackness, but of silence, as well. “No!” he howled, panic lending him strength.

“Hold him still, damnit!” Harrison snapped.

Sands gave one last titanic heave, and managed to throw Boston off his back. The agent toppled sideways, into Harrison, knocking her away and sending them both sprawling off to Sands’ left. 

The syringe snapped, leaving the needle in Sands’ neck. Uncaring, he rolled up to his knees. He wanted his gun, he _needed_ his gun, but there was no time to find it. Instead he leaned down, and reached for his foot.

Technically, the scorpion dagger still belonged to El. If he had asked for it, Sands would have returned it, but the mariachi seemed to have forgotten all about it. Every morning as he got dressed Sands slipped that silver sheath down into his right boot. He would no more have thought to leave it behind than he would have thought to stop wearing his sunglasses. The dagger was a part of him now.

His hand closed over the hilt, and he yanked the dagger free. Still on his knees, he turned to face his attackers. He swung his arm in a short arc, and felt a shock travel all the way up to his shoulder as the blade slashed Boston.

The agent let out a shrill scream, and fell back. Sands heard him writhing on the floor, and he tensed for another attack, but for the time being Boston didn’t seem too inclined to come at him again.

Which left only Harrison.

He could hear her moving about, trying to gather her wits about her. He wished he knew where he had shot her, and how badly she was injured. She didn’t sound like she was dying, though, and that was not good. Not good at all.

“You bastard,” she whispered, and fired her gun.

The moment she spoke, Sands ducked and threw the dagger at her. He had spent much of the summer practicing, throwing at targets El set up in the backyard, and he had gotten quite good. He heard the dagger strike her, and a moment later she screamed.

The bullet meant for his head tore a groove along the floor, missing him completely. She fired twice more as she fell, her finger pulling the trigger in reflex. These bullets went harmlessly into the ceiling. She landed on the floor, and was still.

Silence descended in the house. Outside, it thundered again. The wind howled through the windows. Sands turned around. The gun. The gun. Where was his fucking gun? It had been knocked from his hand when he went down, spinning across the floor. On his hands and knees, he groped for it, feeling his way along the floor, hating that he was reduced to this, to such _blind-man_ behavior.

A hand closed over his ankle. He shouted in surprise and kicked out with his other foot, hearing the satisfying crunch of bone as Boston’s nose broke. 

The hand dropped away. He slapped faster at the floor, trying to find the gun. “Come on, come on, come on,” he begged. “Where are you?”

“Oh, you fucker,” Boston whispered. “You are so gonna wish you hadn’t done that.”

“Promises, promises,” Sands muttered. 

The hand grabbed his ankle again, and yanked back.

His fingers brushed solid metal, then the sensation was gone. His flailing hand had found the gun, just as Boston pulled him away from it.

“God _damn_ it!” he shouted.

Boston dragged him backward. A fist hammered down on his legs, his lower back, his kidneys. The pain was excruciating. He yelled, kicking out again.

The hand about his ankle loosened, just a little.

It was enough. Sands gave one final desperate lunge forward on his belly, and his hand closed about the gun.

With a roar of triumph, he rolled over and threw himself at Boston. The agent fell backward, screaming in pain and rage, Sands on top of him.

Despite his injuries, Boston was strong. He thrashed around, hitting Sands on the head and shoulders with his fists. “Get off me, you fucker!” 

Sands ignored the blows. He grabbed hold of Boston’s hair in order to hold his head still. He jammed the gun into Boston’s face as hard as he could.

Into Boston’s eye.

“How do _you_ like it, you fuck?” he snarled. 

He pulled the trigger.

Blood and gore spattered onto his face and neck, making him flinch. Boston shuddered once, and then was still. 

Sands fell back, breathing hard. He dragged his sleeve across his mouth, wiping the blood away, retching a little as he did so; he didn’t want to taste any of it.

Boston was dead. One down, one to go. Where was That Bitch?

He forced himself to be still. He had heard her breathing earlier, but now he could hear nothing. He had shot her and stabbed her. Was she dead?

Cautiously he crawled toward the last place he had heard her. He held the gun in his right hand, and scooted his left hand along the floor, fingers spread, inching it slowly forward. If she was unconscious he did not want to rouse her. He would just find where she was, and tie her up so she couldn’t fight back. He would go into the kitchen and get the ice cream scoop. Then the _real_ fun would begin.

A wave of nausea swept over him. Drops of Boston’s blood dripped from his face and landed on the carpet.

Then again, maybe not. He didn’t seem to have the strength for a good torture session. Maybe he would just press the gun to her head, and pull the trigger. It was a cleaner death than she deserved, but it would be quick, and then this would all be over.

His hand slid forward. His fingertips brushed fabric. Denim. Jeans. Her leg.

Her leg twitched beneath his hand, and he jerked back instinctively but he was too slow. Something whistled through the air, and then the scorpion dagger buried itself in his left hand, all the way through, on into the floor.

Sands screamed. He couldn’t help it. 

Yet a part of him was laughing. _Hey look, El! We’re going to have matching scars!_

“Got you,” Belinda Harrison whispered. Outside, it thundered.

She pulled the gun from his other hand. She shoved the barrel against his temple, forcing him to lie down, his face pressed to the floor, his left arm stretched out at a painful angle, held by the knife through his hand. “You little fuck,” she panted. “You really thought you could beat _me_?” 

She sounded hurt, but she sounded strong. It occurred to Sands that he was in a very bad position right now.

Very bad.

Well, hell, he had been in worse situations. There really was nothing like waking up to find a drug lord standing over you while his evil doctor friend examined the shiny metal object he was holding.

“You have to give me credit for trying,” Sands said. She was leaning over him, the better to jam the gun against his skull, and he could smell the madness on her. It was not a pleasant smell.

 _There, you see?_ said the voice in his head. _If you had killed yourself yesterday, you would never have found out what insanity smells like. Aren’t you glad you stayed alive for this?_

A growl of frustrated rage escaped him. Most days he embraced the madness, just like he had told El, but sometimes, like now, he hated it. Times like this, he wanted to tell it to go away and leave him alone, and never hear from it again. “Shut up,” he muttered. “Just shut up.”

“What?” Harrison asked. Her voice was taut with fury; she thought he was defying her.

“Nothing,” he said. “Not talking to you.”

She laughed. “Oh, I get it. Who does your voice sound like?” Her anger had disappeared. Now she just sounded curious.

He couldn’t believe this. She was moments away from killing him, and she wanted to compare insanities.

“Tell me,” she insisted. The gun pressed painfully against his temple. “I want to know.”

“It’s no one you know,” he gasped. Christ, in another minute she was going to break through his skin and just shove the gun inside his skull.

“Mine sounds like my mother,” she said absently.

“Good for her,” Sands said.

“Sheldon.” The pressure at his temple eased slightly. “Come with me.”

He started in surprise. “What?”

“You heard me. Come with me.” Her voice took on a distant note. “We could rule this country, you and I.”

It was the kind of line that belonged in a bad movie. He wanted to laugh – but he didn’t dare, not with a gun jammed against his skull. 

And she had no idea. As she talked on, telling him about her grand plans for Mexico, he realized she had absolutely no clue what she sounded like. Not that it would have mattered, even if she had, he supposed. She was insane. Tiny things like logic didn’t matter to Belinda Harrison anymore.

“Think about it,” she said coyly. “We could restore the balance. Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted?”

He did think about it.

Would it really be so bad, to ride off into the sunset with her? They could be this generation's Bonnie and Clyde. El Presidente would have to die, of course, but after that it would be a case of anything goes. He would definitely be living _la vida loca_ then, not just cooling his heels in some shitsplat town with a dour mariachi who thought he was Sigmund Freud as a roommate.

“No,” he said. He wanted out of here all right, but not with her. 

Her voice dipped down lower, but did not lose that coy note. “Oh, really?” She walked her fingers up the hilt of the dagger, making him gasp with pain. “I can make you say yes. And you know I can.”

Hell, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. He shrugged, as much as he could. “All right.”

“All right? You’re not just telling me what I want to hear?”

“Nope,” he said. He wished she would let go of the dagger. Even the slightest touch sent waves of pain crashing through his hand, all the way up his arm and neck, to settle in his brain. “I mean it. Let me up.”

“Really?” She sounded delighted.

“Sure, why not?” He gave her a smile.

To his immense relief, she let go of the dagger. She shifted position. The gun barrel was dragged from his temple, down his cheek, to nestle under his jaw. She stroked his hair, tucking it behind his ear. He no longer wore it that way, but of course she would not know that, and he wasn’t about to tell her.

“Did you know,” she said, her voice suddenly dropping an octave, “I thought it was so sexy, seeing you sitting there at my house in Durango. I nearly came to visit you that night.”

He felt ill. Trying to get him to side with her was one thing. Now she wanted to seduce him? “Did you now?” he drawled, hoping he sounded disinterested enough to piss her off, so she would get on with the real reason she had come here.

“Oh, yes. The only reason I didn’t was because I couldn’t find a way for us to be alone. I knew if I was in there too long, Rick would come looking for me. He didn’t like me going in to see you.”

“I bet he didn’t,” he said, trying not to remember what it felt like to have a gun shoved inside his eyesocket. “So you two were lovers?”

“Yeah,” she said. She sounded bored. “All I needed was ten minutes alone with you. You were helpless, chained to that chair. I could have gotten what I wanted, with no one being any the wiser. But Rick wouldn’t let me.” She sighed. “Oh well.”

She was absolutely insane. Well, he could respect that. “There’ll be plenty of time for that later,” Sands said, wondering what he was getting himself into. He had never done it with her, nor even tried. Her reputation had preceded her, even all the way down to Mexico. She was a cocktease of the worst kind, everyone said, leading men on and then turning cold and vindictive. Knowing he would fail if he tried to get her in bed, Sands had simply never even bothered. It was his first rule in life -- always play to win. He supposed that was one of the reasons she had hated him so much.

“Kiss me,” she demanded.

“Christ, Bel. You’re already making me regret my decision,” he said. “Let me up.”

“Your decision?” she snapped. “You think you had a choice in this?” She grabbed his jaw and turned his head up, then leaned in and kissed him.

Kissing her like kissing a snake. Her tongue darted into his mouth, hot and insistent. She twined her fingers in his hair, holding his head still as she ravaged his mouth. He forced himself to stay still, and wondered what she thought of Boston’s blood all over his face, if she thought that was sexy, too. 

She reached up and took off his sunglasses. He gritted his teeth and said nothing, hating his helplessness.

She stared at him for a long time, making him burn with shame and anger, while outside, thunder rumbled again and the wind gusted hard enough to rattle the windows. She touched him, outlining the hollow where his eye had been.

She was not gentle. He flinched back. “Jesus, Bel!”

“Does it hurt when I touch it?” she asked.

“What the fuck do you think?” he retorted.

Wrong answer. She pressed hard with two of her fingers right where the top of his cheek disappeared and the hole began. Sands cried out and tossed his head, trying to pull away from her.

She laughed, and removed her fingers. “Interesting.” She leaned in and kissed him again.

“Bel.” He tore his mouth away from hers. He wanted to spit her saliva out of his mouth. Even Boston’s blood had been better than this. “My hand. Please?”

“Not yet. I want you to hear my plan first.”

Oh God. She wasn’t really going to let him up. She was just going to sit here and talk him to death, maybe give the dagger a little twist every now and then to keep things interesting. He tried to smile. “So tell me. I’m all ears,” he said.

She chuckled. She put his sunglasses back on, patting them firmly onto his face. “You’re all ears. I like that. Of course you are, Sheldon. What else have you got now?

“Anyway, here’s how it goes. We wait here. When that mariachi and his buddies come back, I shoot them. Then we leave, you and I, together.”

“That’s it?” he asked in amazement, forgetting that this spring he had come up with the worst plan in all of history. “It’s not much of a plan. What am I supposed to do while all this is going on?”

“Oh,” she said, “didn’t I tell you? You get to kill your friend.”

“Ah,” he said. Of course. 

“I’ll take the other two. They don’t look very smart. But you can kill that big mariachi. I can’t wait to see the look on his face when you shoot him. I bet you wish you could see it, too.”

_Bel, my dear, you have no idea._

“Sounds good to me,” he said. “I’ve had it with his sanctimonious crap. I wanted to kill him last night, you know, but in the end I couldn’t do it.”

“Oh really?” she murmured. She sounded bored again.

“Yes, but I don’t think I’ll have that problem now. Listen, they should be back soon.” Every word he spoke made the gun dig painfully into his jaw. “Let me up. You go sit on the couch, so they can’t see you as they’re walking up to the house. I’ll wait by the window, and let you know when I hear them coming.” 

She was silent for a long moment. Then the gun was withdrawn. “All right.”

Sands breathed a little easier.

She leaned back. “Sorry about this, Sheldon.” She yanked the dagger back, pulling it free of the floor and his hand.

Powerless not to, he screamed. There had never been pain like this, not even when they took his eyes. He was glad he could not see the damage she had done to his hand. He was afraid if he saw it, he would never stop screaming.

_Oh you bitch, you fucking bitch. What have you done to me?_

“Shut up,” she complained. “You stabbed me first, you know.”

He staggered to his feet, cradling his maimed hand to his chest. Blood poured from the hole the dagger had made. He tried to wiggle his fingers and almost screamed again with the pain – but they did move, which was an encouraging sign.

She walked away, and he heard the couch sigh as she sank down. “How much longer will they be?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Ah, Bel?”

“What?”

“Are you going to give me my gun back?”

She laughed. “Not hardly. How crazy do you think I am?”

“Well, how the hell do you expect me to kill El, then?” he demanded. “I can’t shoot him with my finger.”

“Use your hands,” she said. “You’re CIA. You know how.”

“Oh my Christ,” he sighed. “Fine. Whatever.”

He started to walk toward the window, and then he had an idea. Carefully he lowered himself to one knee, and felt along the floor. When his exploring fingers found the dagger, he picked it up.

He went over to the window, and settled himself in to wait.

Outside, it began to rain.

***********

Chapter 16: The Storm Breaks

 

They were driving back to the house when El saw the kid.

He was half-running, half-staggering. The side of his face was covered in blood. El had seen enough gunshot wounds in his life to recognize the source of all that blood, and his heart began to pound with dread.

Chiclet looked up, saw the car coming, and waved his arms frantically. A second later, he stopped dead, swayed back and forth, then collapsed.

El slammed on the brakes, bringing the car to a shuddering halt. He threw it in park, fought a mercifully brief struggle with his seat belt, and leapt out of the car. 

He ran down the road, his hair whipping into his eyes from the rapidly increasing wind. The first raindrops pelted his face. His breath came in hot, panicky gasps.

Chiclet was dead.

His thoughts were a white, frozen blur. His brain could only process those three terrible words. 

Something inside him let out a wail. Chiclet was dead!

El genuinely liked the boy. He was funny, a gifted mimic, and he had a pure heart. He had a steadying influence on Sands. Over the summer he had slowly, completely unconsciously, begun to draw the agent out of his hard shell, and teach him how to interact with people on a normal level. In just three months the boy had accomplished more than El could have hoped to achieve in a lifetime.

And he was a good guitar player.

He had his own guitar now. He kept it at the house, saying that if he brought it back to his home, one of his parents or many siblings would steal it from him and sell it for the money. El had nodded in understanding when he heard this. He had told Chiclet that the boy could keep the guitar in the living room, where he could come any time and play it.

Sands had actually bought the guitar, on one of his many trips to the market, shaming El by the gesture -- he felt he should have been the one to think of it. Sands had said nothing to El of his plans. He had just left one day, and come back with a proud, strangely shy little smile on his face and the guitar in his hand. “Look what I got for Chiclet.”

El had smiled back. It was a good guitar, he could see that from where he was standing. Seeing it had reminded him of the boy from his own past, who had used a guitar to smuggle drugs so his father would have an easy life. “Can I try it?”

“No.” Sands had scowled, and rotated his wrist so the guitar ended up half-hidden behind his back. “It’s a good guitar, I can tell.” He had given El a self-deprecating smirk. “Besides, no one in this town would dare sell me shoddy merchandise.”

This much was true, El had to admit.

Chiclet was astonished when he received the present. He had thrown his arms about Sands’ neck and hugged him, much to Sands’ chagrin. He had immediately set about playing it, producing such a discordant noise on his first attempt that Sands had taken the guitar from him.

But the agent had been laughing. “That’s not even a note, Chiclet.”

El had been sitting nearby, watching all this with interest. But when he heard that, a crushing wave of grief had overcome him. He had gone outside, to stand alone on the porch. He was thinking about Carolina, and the first night they had spent together, how he had said the very same thing to her as she tried to help him play. Inside the house he heard Chiclet asking Sands why he had left.

In a surprising display of tact, Sands, who had known damn well why he had left, made up an excuse. Something about El’s mariachi pride being offended at seeing a boy play such a fine instrument.

El had just bowed his head. He had walked outside because he had not wanted Chiclet to see him being sad. 

Within the week the boy had been playing the guitar, and playing it well. He was a natural musician, and El enjoyed hearing him play. Recently he had begun to ask about the piano, it was so pretty, was it hard to learn, could you play both guitar and piano, that sort of thing. El had thought about ordering one and having it shipped to the house, its arrival timed to coincide with a day Chiclet was visiting. It would be worth the hassle and expense, just to see the look on the boy’s face.

But there was not going to be a piano now. He skidded to a halt beside the boy’s fallen form, and dropped to his knees. “Please,” he whispered.

And to his astonishment, Chiclet stirred.

El slumped with relief. Until that very moment, he had truly believed the boy was dead. But the bullet had merely grazed the boy’s forehead, he saw now. There was a lot of blood, as there was with all head wounds, but Chiclet was alive. In pain, and frightened, but very alive.

“Señor!” Chiclet grabbed at his arm. “La Americana! Ella esta a su casa!” _The American woman! She’s at your house!_

El felt the blood drain from his face. “Was she alone?”

“Sí,” the boy said. “Señor Sands, he said to run and find you. He said to tell you that he was still standing.”

El’s heart contracted in his chest. If Sands and Belinda Harrison were alone at the house, then one of them was surely not still standing. “How long ago was this?”

“No se,” the boy said. He gave El a miserable look, well aware that he had just failed to answer a crucial question.

El tried not to look angry. A lot depended on the answer to that question. If Belinda Harrison had just arrived, there might still be time to stop her. But if Chiclet had fallen unconscious for a while before running down the road, there was no telling how much time they had lost. And in a situation like this, even five minutes could make a difference.

Overhead, it thundered. Lightning strobed through the clouds. Lorenzo and Fideo came trotting up, worry on their faces. Lorenzo had drawn his gun. “Is he all right?”

“He’s fine,” El said. He reached out a hand and helped the boy sit up. Chiclet gasped with pain, and touched the wound on his forehead.

El pulled his hand down. “Don’t,” he said. “Let it bleed. It will clean the wound.”

Chiclet nodded, his face screwed up with pain. He turned to look in the direction of the house. His dark eyes were filled with worry. “We have to hurry. Señor Sands was all alone with her. Ella esta loco.”

“I know,” El said. Belinda Harrison was insane. After today, he knew that beyond a doubt. “Come with us.”

As he and Chiclet walked back to the car, it began to rain in earnest.

****

When they arrived at the house, El told Fideo to wait in the car with the boy. He took Lorenzo with him, and approached the house slowly, his gun drawn.

He could see nothing. There might have been a figure at the window as he pulled the car into the driveway, but if there had been, the person was gone now.

All was silent.

On the porch he found the first signs, the beginnings of the story. A bullet hole was in one of the steps leading up to the porch. Splinters of wood had sprayed outward from the hole.

There was blood on the railing above the stairs.

Sands’ guitar was on the floor.

The front door was ajar. El motioned for Lorenzo to stay on the porch, and using the barrel of his pistol, slowly pushed the door open all the way.

The scene inside made the breath catch in his throat. He just stood there for a long moment, unable to believe what he was seeing.

A tall, blond man lay on his back in the middle of the floor. It took El a long moment to recognize him as one of the junior CIA agents, because half his face had been blown away. A long knife slash crossed his forearm, as though he had been cut while in the process of reaching out for something.

Belinda Harrison was sitting on the couch. She had been shot in the shoulder, and just below that was a deep stab wound. Her white shirt was a garish crimson on that side of her body. She was soaked in sweat, her blond hair plastered to her head. She was holding a gun on him. Sands’ pistol was tucked in the waistband of her jeans.

Sands was standing near the window, looking for all the world as though he was staring out at the rain. He was covered in blood and gore, although El could tell most of it was not his. Blood rained to the carpet from a ragged hole in his left hand, and El felt a twinge of sympathetic pain in his own hand at the sight.

Behind him, Lorenzo stepped into the house, ready to back him up. When he saw Belinda Harrison, he raised his gun.

Without moving from her spot on the couch, she shot him four times. Lorenzo staggered backward, hit the doorframe, and collapsed.

Stunned, El stared at his dead friend. He looked back at Belinda Harrison. She still had not moved. 

His hand tightened on his gun. His finger curled around the trigger. He meant to shoot her then, and finish this woman off once and for all.

“Hey, El,” Sands said. He sounded slightly dazed, as though he was but a step away from fainting. He came toward El, and El suddenly saw that he was holding the scorpion dagger in his good hand. The blade dripped with blood.

El looked from Sands to Belinda Harrison and back. Outside, it thundered again, directly overhead. The entire house shook with the resulting echo. 

The thunder rolled on endlessly. El felt the tremors of the house settle in his own body. Except for that trembling, he could not move. He felt weighted down with shock.

 _No_ , he thought. _It can’t be_. After everything they had been through, for Sands to betray him now -- it wasn’t possible.

“Why?” he managed. If Sands was going to kill him, he wanted to know why, first.

“Sorry about this,” Sands said emotionlessly, and plunged the dagger into his chest.

**** 

The only interesting thing about this whole fuck-up was that it gave Sands a chance to really think hard about El, and how he felt about the mariachi.

He stood in front of the window, listening to the rain and the thunder, holding the scorpion dagger in his right hand, trying desperately not to think about the pain in his left hand. He felt cold all over, and he knew that blood loss was affecting him. A nagging hurt in his neck made him reach up. To his amazement, the needle was still there, from when Harrison had tried to drug him.

He pulled it out and dropped it to the floor. He leaned his forehead against the window, and tried to focus.

Last night he had wanted to kill El, but something had stopped him at the last minute. Now he was expected to kill the man, and he just didn’t know how he felt about it.

As he usually did in times like this, he consulted the voice within. And for the first time in a very long time, it had nothing to say.

 _Sulking?_ he prodded.

It remained quiet.

And he realized that he was going to be allowed to think about this one rationally.

He was not ungrateful. He could hear Belinda Harrison behind him, occasionally groaning and shifting about on the couch. He had hurt her, and maybe even badly, but she was clearly still feeling well if she was moving around that much.

_Don’t think about her, asshole. Think about El._

Ah, there it was. The voice. His oldest companion. But that was all it said. Just that one mental nudge.

All right, all right. Think about El.

The problem was that he wasn’t used to thinking about anyone except himself. He couldn’t really put himself in El’s shoes because they just didn’t fit. 

_You don’t know me_ , he had said to El, but here was the kicker. He didn’t know El, either. They had spent all this time together, but it wasn’t like they sat up at night talking about things mysterious and profound. He knew things _about_ El, but he didn’t really know the man.

“But I think,” he whispered -- it helped him order his thoughts sometimes to speak them out loud -- “I want to.”

Sometimes he hated El. Occasionally, although this happened with far less frequency these days, he felt slightly afraid of El. Most of the time he actually liked the mariachi.

And yes, once upon a time he had wanted to kill El. Ever since the day El had thrown him through the porch out back, dragged him out of the house, handcuffed him to the door handle and driven away with him, he had wanted to kill El. Because of El, he had lost control of his own life, and become nothing more than a supporting player in a drama he had always intended to watch from the safety of the sidelines.

Yet El was the first person he had ever wanted to kill, whom he had not killed. No one else had gotten so lucky. Always before, when he had made up his mind to kill, that person had died. No second chances, no last requests, no nothing. Just death. End of story.

Except for El.

He was hard pressed to explain it. At first, he had refrained from killing El because he had needed the mariachi alive. El had driven him all over Mexico in an effort to keep him ignorant, until finally he had confronted El in a hotel room, and forced the mariachi to stop lying to him.

After that things had changed. They had been more open, more honest. After that, he had not killed El because he was enjoying the chase. Hunting down the Escalante cartel had given him something to do, something to think about other than the terrifying darkness he lived in now. If he killed El, the hunt would end and he would be forced to think about his blindness, and that was something to be avoided at all costs.

The night before going down to Escalante’s hacienda, he had sat under the stars and played guitar for El. For a few brief moments, he had been content. It had not mattered that he couldn’t see, or that the chances of dying the next day were extremely good. It had been enough, that night, just to sit outside with a companion.

The next day, standing outside the courtyard of the hacienda, waiting for El’s explosive to go off and start the slaughter, he had suddenly been struck by a thought. He had asked El once, _Why did you take me with you?_ but he had not asked the more important question.

_Why didn’t you kill me when you found me at Ramirez’s house?_

He supposed he hadn’t asked because he knew the answer already. He and El had many things in common – more than a man like El would want to admit – but there were large differences between them, too. The fact that El had not killed him was just one of those differences.

After the shoot-out with the cartel, his focus had become his own survival. No time to think about killing El. 

Then, Puerto Vallarta.

He had seriously considered shooting El the morning after his breakdown. Not since childhood had he allowed anyone to witness such a humiliating loss of control. The fact that El was responsible for it made him even more determined to kill the mariachi.

But he had not. Understanding that his welcome was worn out, El had packed his things, taken his guitar case, and left.

And that was that.

Until spring, when he had encountered El at Ramirez’s house yet again. Only this time, he had not felt any desire to kill the mariachi. None at all.

In fact, deep inside, in those secret places where he could rarely stand to do more than glimpse at what lay inside, he had been glad to see El again. He had missed the mariachi’s brooding companionship.

The CIA was after them, and the chase was on again. Everything had happened so fast, but in Durango, it had all come to a head. In Durango, he had realized that he cared about El. That he did not want to lose the strange, violent friendship he had developed with the mariachi.

And El had come back for him. He had never known anyone who would have done such a thing for him. 

He heard the car pull up outside. He took a quick step to his right, so he would not be in front of the window. A door slammed, then another. Footsteps hurried through the rain, two sets of them. He heard the clunking bootheel and knew the second person was Lorenzo.

And suddenly he knew what he had to do.

He stood very still as El and Lorenzo entered the house. He did nothing as Belinda Harrison shot Lorenzo.

When Lorenzo fell, he made his move. He began walking toward El.

And El let him come. He knew the mariachi was in shock, unable to understand what was happening. El did his best thinking on his feet, but this had rocked the man back on his heels, and left him incapable of thought.

“Hey, El,” he said. He raised the dagger.

“Why?” El asked. He sounded utterly defeated.

That defeat pissed Sands off. He felt bad about the whole killing El thing, really he did. But it wasn’t like he had a choice.

Besides, El ought to know better.

 _You don’t know me_ , he had said, but El did. The mariachi had proved that often enough, never more so than last night. 

_I know you’ve spent all summer fighting your insanity, and it’s killing you._

True. Very true.

_But guess what, El? I’m not fighting it anymore._

_And I’ve never felt better._

Surely El would know that he had no intention of joining someone like Belinda Harrison. If he were going to betray El, he would have done it long before now, back when they were still enemies. Before the confrontation in the hotel room, before he had forced the truth into their relationship. No, the time for betrayal had come and gone. That was an opportunity that wouldn’t be coming round again.

Surely El would know that.

“Sorry about this,” he said.

El stiffened beneath him as the knife sank into his chest. “Sands?” The mariachi sounded bewildered, his voice very small.

Behind them, Belinda Harrison started laughing.

“Shut up,” Sands said. He let go of the dagger, leaving it in El’s chest. Blood slimed his hand where he had held it. He didn’t know anymore if that blood belonged to Harrison, Boston, El, or himself. He supposed it didn’t matter.

He reached out and encountered El’s arm. He followed the arm down, his fingers moving lightly – _the touch of a blind man_ – and finding El’s hand.

Finding El’s gun.

He pulled the gun from El’s hand with ease. He cocked it. “Say good-bye, El,” he whispered.

With a low groan, El collapsed to the floor. On the couch, Belinda Harrison laughed louder. She clapped her hands in delight. “Oh, Sheldon, I wish you could have seen his face.”

Sands turned around and calmly shot her.

Her laughter broke off in a gasp of shock and pain. “No!”

“I said, say good-bye, _Bel_.” He walked toward the couch, the gun held high.

In his head, he heard their voices.

Barillo. _Fortunately for you, you have only seen things._

He pulled the trigger.

Belinda Harrison, laughing as she dug her fingers into the empty place where his eye had been. 

He pulled the trigger.

Barillo again. _We must make sure that does not happen again._

He pulled the trigger.

Ajedrez. _See something you like?_

No. He would never see again. But he still had his imagination. And sometimes that was enough.

When he reached the couch, he stopped. “Are you dead yet?” he asked, keeping his voice low, soft. The way he had spoken to all those people he killed, just before pulling the trigger one last time.

She was dying, but she found the strength for one last defiance. “Barillo...was supposed to...kill you,” she breathed.

Sands leaned down. “I know,” he whispered. He pressed the muzzle of his gun to her face. Just below her eye. “But he didn’t. You fucked up. Good-bye, Bel.”

He pulled the trigger. Her whole body flew backward, slammed into the back of the couch, then slid slowly down to one side. 

Sands dropped the gun into her lap, and turned around. “El.”

The mariachi did not respond.

“El?”

A wave of sound roared into him, muting the world with a gray drone. His knees buckled and he fell. He slumped backward, sprawling against the couch so that Bel’s left knee brushed his right shoulder.

“Talk to me,” he pleaded.

But they were silent. All of the voices.

**** 

El watched as Sands killed Belinda Harrison. He had fallen with his head turned to the right, and he could see it all as it happened. He saw the uncomprehending shock on her face as she realized she had been betrayed. Only at the very last did she realize the magnitude of her error, of thinking she could get away with what she had done to Sands.

Because she _had_ done it. He knew that now. It had taken three hours of searching her house, but he had found it. In a document pouch hidden inside a fake compartment in her bookcase, he had found the proof. A copy of a letter to Armando Barillo, dated July 2, 2003 -- four months before the Day of the Dead, and the attempted coup.

In the letter Belinda Harrison told Barillo about Sands. She gave Barillo his badge number, and urged him to check into the CIA agent’s background. She warned Barillo that Sands knew about the coup, and was trying to stop it, but more importantly, that he was planning to steal the payoff money meant for General Marquez.

It was the badge number, El knew, that would have convinced Barillo of the letter’s authenticity. Without that he would have dismissed it as a crackpot threat. But the badge number was serious. That was real.

So Barillo had set about finding out for sure. He had sent his daughter Ajedrez to find Sands and make him trust her. And when Ajedrez learned the plan, she had gone straight to her father and told him everything.

The only thing El could not figure out was why Barillo had not just killed Sands. He knew the man had been ruthless and cruel – blinding someone would have been just his kind of sick fun. But killing Sands would have been so much easier.

There were only two answers to this puzzle, and El Mariachi would never know which one was right. Either Ajedrez had suggested they just remove Sands’ eyes, or Belinda Harrison had. Whoever’s idea it had been, Barillo had listened to it.

El shuddered.

The movement sent a bolt of pain through him, and he gasped. He had been lying there, so still, lost in a daze, but now the world suddenly came back to him with startling clarity. And everything was very quiet, he realized.

Belinda Harrison was dead. She had fallen face-forward onto the couch cushions. Blood spattered the wall and cushions behind her.

Sands was sitting on the floor, his back against the couch, one leg folded beneath him, the other stretched out. His left hand rested in his lap. He was bleeding very badly. He seemed conscious, but it was hard to tell.

Footsteps sounded to his left, running up the porch steps. El turned his head so he could look out the open front door. Doing so brought the hilt of the scorpion dagger into focus, and he felt sick to his stomach at the sight.

Worse, seeing the dagger made the pain in his chest flare to life. He gasped, arching slightly with the hurt.

The pain was terrible -- but he would live. Sands had stabbed him high enough to miss his heart or his lungs. The dagger was buried in the fleshy part of his upper chest, a painful injury, but not a life-threatening one. The stabbing had been necessary, he understood now, so Belinda Harrison would think Sands was on her side. 

It still hurt like hell, though.

Fideo stopped dead in the doorway. He stared down at Lorenzo’s body, grief twisting his features. “Oh my God.”

Chiclet stood behind him. The boy obviously wanted to run into the house, but he held himself back. The cut on his forehead had stopped bleeding, and Fideo had cleaned him up some, so he looked much better. Still hurting, but better.

“It’s all right,” El said wearily. He tried to sit up, failed miserably, and tried again. His breath caught on a low groan, but this time he made it. He pushed with his feet and his elbows, scooting backward across the carpet until he could lean against the armchair that had been Ramirez’s favorite. “It’s over with.”

Over by the couch, Sands lifted his head. “El?”

There was no mistaking the relief in his voice. El wondered if that relief was due to the fact that he was still alive. _Did he think he killed me?_

“El?”

He said the first thing that popped into his head. “I’m still standing.”

Sands sighed. His shoulders slumped. _He thought he killed me_ , El realized with some amazement. _He really did, and it upset him. I’ll be damned._

Immediately he was ashamed of himself for thinking that way. The man slumped against his couch was not the same man who had reveled in the chaos of a coup d’etat. Sands had changed so much since that day that sometimes El barely recognized him.

He felt sorry for Sands. The man was psychotic, but something had made him that way. He was capable of surprising flashes of humanity, just enough to keep El hoping that maybe one day Sands would be able to conquer his madness. The battle he had fought all summer was just one more reason for that hope. Any man who could try to overcome his insanity was not a man to give up on.

“What happened here?” Fideo whispered. He knelt down beside Lorenzo, and touched his friend’s face.

“El.” Sands ignored Fideo completely. “The kid.” He stopped, and swallowed convulsively. He laid his head back on the couch cushions. “She shot him. Chiclet. I couldn’t stop her. He’s dead. I’m so sorry.” His shoulders hitched, and El suspected that if it was possible, Sands would be crying right now.

It was cruel to keep silent. But this was not his revelation to make. He glanced outside and saw Chiclet standing in the doorway. The boy’s eyes were huge in his face as he stared at the carnage in the living room.

El beckoned him inside. He pointed to Sands. 

And Chiclet did not hesitate. He came running forward. “Señor!”

Sands sat bolt upright. “Chiclet?” he said in disbelief. “Oh my Christ. I thought she killed you.”

The boy skidded to a stop in front of Sands. He seemed unsure what to do next. “No,” he said with simple childish honestly. “She just shot me.” His eyes filled with tears when he saw the ruin of Sands’ left hand. “Are you all right?”

“Oh, I’ll be just peachy,” Sands sighed.

“I was so worried about you.” Chiclet threw his arms around Sands’ neck.

And Sands, after only a moment’s hesitation, returned that hug with all his strength.

**********

Chapter 17: When All is Said and Done

 

November 2. The Day of the Dead.

El Mariachi sat on the front porch of the house in Culiacan. It was late morning, almost noon, and he was feeling sleepy. The windows of the house were open, and he could easily hear the voices within.

“Here?”

“No, no. Here. Like this.”

“I am never going to get this.”

“Yes, you will. If I can do it, you can too.”

“Didn’t I tell you to stop that? Quit closing your eyes when you play. I fucking hate that.”

“I want to. That way we’re learning together.”

“Oh Christ. Whatever.”

A long pause.

“Your hand doesn’t hurt anymore, does it?”

“No. No.”

“Are you ready?”

“Yeah. I think.” Pause. “All right. Here goes.”

El listened as the clear notes of piano sounded. The song was simple, but fast-paced. The notes rang out, a waterfall of sound that evoked a tug in El’s chest.

Until the wrong key was struck. The song stopped. “Damnit. That wasn’t right, was it?”

“No. But it was close. Here. This one.” A single key was pressed.

“Fucker. I always miss that one.”

“I know. I do, too.”

And then, shockingly, the boy burst into tears.

“Hey!”

The boy just cried, his tears muffled now, like he had covered his face with his hands. El considered getting up, but he was falling asleep, so he didn’t.

“All right. Let go. _Let go_. What’s wrong?”

The boy started talking, but El heard none of it. He was fast asleep.

Dreaming. Remembering.

*****

Fideo called the doctor, and the police. The doctor arrived first.

He was a small man, very compact. He was familiar with the house and its strange occupants; he had been Ramirez’s doctor. He told Sands that he needed to get to a hospital, and have surgery on his hand, or he might never be able to use it again.

“Fuck that,” Sands said. “I’m not going. You can stitch it up here.”

“But Señor,” the doctor tried.

“Just do it,” Sands said, enunciating each syllable.

El said nothing during all this. He could have told the doctor that it was not an argument he could win, but he didn’t have the strength. The doctor had already stitched his wound, and he was light-headed with painkillers and antibiotics and whatever else the man had given him.

So the doctor tended to Sands right there. Chiclet sat at the agent’s side the whole time, holding Sands’ right hand. His big eyes watched the doctor carefully, and before the doctor did anything, he told Sands what to expect next.

In return, Sands told the kid to shut the fuck up. Neither El nor Chiclet held this against him, however. It had been a very trying day for Sands, and neither of them was surprised when he passed out halfway through the doctor’s ministrations.

The doctor treated Chiclet last, but El didn’t remember this. He had finally succumbed to unconsciousness himself.

****

Fideo stayed at the house for eight days. During this time he took care of his two patients, growing ever more sulky and bitter. Chiclet came around as often as possible in order to help, which was probably the only reason Fideo stayed as long as he did.

On the ninth day, Fideo walked into El’s room. El was sitting on the edge of the bed. He felt stronger today, and he had been idly thinking of asking Fideo to bring him his guitar. He felt like playing.

“I’m leaving,” Fideo announced flatly. In the whole week he had been there, El had not seen him take one drink. He wondered if maybe the enforced sobriety had something to do with Fideo’s sour mood.

“I’m not coming back,” Fideo said. “And I don’t want you to call on me again. I won’t come, if you do.”

El stared at the floor, and said nothing.

“Lorenzo was like my brother. He was all I had, after Carmen died. And now he’s gone, too.”

“I am sorry,” El said, very quietly.

“You should be,” Fideo said. He walked out of the room.

El remained where he was, staring at the floor. After a time the floor lost touch with reality, and became just a blur of color swimming before his eyes.

He heard the front door open and close.

Some time later, footsteps sounded in the hall. A voice in the doorway said, “So the little mariachi is gone.”

El nodded. He blinked, and the floor regained its clarity. But he still did not lift his head.

“He blames you for Lorenzo,” Sands said.

El nodded again. “I can see why he would think that,” Sands said. “But he’s wrong.” He walked away.

**** 

The hurricane had done minimal damage to the village. A few roofs had been torn away, windows had been smashed, and one man had been killed when his car had been swept away in the rising waters.

El went down to the market two weeks after the storm. He was forced to move slowly, but he was starting to feel suffocated in the house. He had to get out.

The familiar singsong call of the vendors soothed his jangled nerves. They called out to him, cajoling, demanding, flattering -- anything to get his attention and make him buy their wares. He walked past them all, his head down, his eyes on the dusty street beneath his boots. He had not come here to shop. He had come here to get away.

Over the next few weeks he went to the market often. During the day he would walk the streets of the village, tiring himself out, hoping that tonight would be the night when he slept all the way through, with no dreams.

And every night, he saw it all happen again. Belinda Harrison sitting on the couch, smiling. Sands at the window, covered in blood. The dead man on the carpet.

Lorenzo, falling into the door, his eyes wide with shock.

Fideo was not alone in blaming him for Lorenzo’s death. El blamed himself, more severely than Fideo ever could.

If only he had approached the house alone. If only he had never left that morning. If only he had never called his friends to come help him.

He was forever getting his friends killed.

First Domino, in the town where it had all begun. He had thought he loved her, but he hadn’t, not really. He had not known love until he met Carolina.

Quino and Campa. They had come to his aid in the fight against Bucho’s men, and both of them had died for him. 

Carolina. His beautiful daughter.

Now Lorenzo.

Who would be next?

****

Summer slipped into autumn. Sands began to play the guitar again, haltingly at first, then with growing ability. Early on, he had scoffed at El’s concern. “I'll be fine,” he had said. “Look at you. You taught yourself to play guitar again, and you were hurt worse than this.”

“That was different,” El had said.

As it turned out, he was right, but not in the way he had expected. Sands was relearning the guitar much faster than he had. But Sands did not have the emotional attachment to the instrument that El did, and all the baggage that went with that attachment. El knew it was only misplaced love for Domino that had prevented him from playing for so long. When he had found Carolina, he had found his music again, almost on the same day.

Because music was becoming part of his life again, he went ahead and ordered the piano for Chiclet. He told no one what he had done, and the day it arrived, Chiclet was in ecstasies of delight. The boy jumped up and down with excitement, laughing loudly.

In the corner, Sands scowled. “What a waste of money.”

El ignored this. Seeing Chiclet’s happiness made him smile. For a little while, at least, he forgot to grieve for Lorenzo.

****

He could hardly believe it was over. He had been on the run for so long, from one threat or another, that it didn’t seem real.

At night he dreamed of death. Carolina smiled and waved at him, and he ran, oh how he ran, but he was always too slow to save her. She died in the dust, and he could only watch.

Or Lorenzo, at his back, ready to defend him. Lorenzo, so cynical and greedy, who had always been quick with a smile.

So many others, all of them willing to die for him.

All of them _had_ died for him.

****

He started to drink. He smoked in the house. He played his guitar with violence, making the whole instrument shake under his hands.

He yelled at Chiclet, and told the boy to stop being so loud, so clumsy, so annoying.

He cultivated sarcasm, and never missed an opportunity to say things like, “You see?” and “Look at that,” or “You should have seen what happened today.” He took to slyly moving the furniture, sliding a table or a chair a few inches to the right, so Sands would trip over them and fall. He moved the agent’s things, so Sands could not find them.

Sands accepted these small torments with surprisingly good grace at first, keeping his anger in check; he simply relied on Chiclet to help him more, and muttered curses in El’s general direction. But as the autumn wore on, so did his patience, and finally one day he snapped. He took a swing at El.

And El, relieved to finally have an opportunity to release his pent-up frustration, held nothing back. He cracked his knuckles, he hit Sands so hard. And he did not stop. He might have killed Sands, but Sands pulled a gun on him, and the sound of the pistol being cocked made El stop in mid-swing.

“You want to stop right now,” Sands said. He was on the floor, bleeding from his nose and mouth. His voice was low, and very deadly. “Or I will blow your fucking head off.”

Without a word, El turned around and walked out of the house.

****

He woke to the sound of the front door slamming shut. He jerked in his chair, one hand diving for the gun at his hip. He moved his hand away, but he did not relax when he saw that it was only Sands standing on the porch.

The fight had happened four days ago. Sands still bore the bruises, although they were fading now. El glanced at him, then looked away. He felt guilty about what had happened, no matter how hard he tried to justify it.

“We need to talk.”

El grunted.

“Did you hear what Chiclet just told me?”

He wondered where the boy was. He did not feel as though he had been sleeping very long.

“Christ, El, are you even listening to me?”

“I’m listening,” he said. 

“Good. I was starting to think I was living with a deaf-mute,” Sands said.

“Fuck you,” El growled.

“You’re welcome to try, any time you like,” Sands drawled, and there was no mistaking the threat in his voice. “But do remember what happened to the last person who tried to fuck me over. We have a brand-new couch in the living room because of that.”

“What do you want?” El asked tiredly. 

“Chiclet told me that Pablo, his oldest brother, has gone missing. They think one of the cartels is involved. At least two cartels are out there, trying to get control of Culiacan. Chiclet says his parents think Pablo might have seen something he wasn’t supposed to.”

El was silent for a long time. In the chair beside him, Sands shifted, and at last El realized some response was expected of him. “So?”

“So? Jesus, El! This is Chiclet we’re talking about! It’s his brother.”

El shrugged.

“Big bad drug cartel? You know, those things you like to shoot up and destroy?”

El shrugged again. He felt bad for the kid, but in a vague, distracted way – the way he felt everything these days. He had no desire to take on another cartel.

“Well then, fuck you. I’m going alone.” Sands stood up, and began walking toward the front door.

Despite his determination not to get emotionally involved with anything anymore, El could not help but notice this. He sat up a little straighter, and turned to look at Sands. “You would go alone, to find this boy?”

Sands stopped, his hand on the doorknob. “Yeah.”

“You’re blind,” El said.

“Thanks for reminding me. I knew I was forgetting something,” Sands said. He turned to face El. “What the hell is the matter with you? I thought you would be halfway to town by now.”

“I can’t go,” El said. He sank back in his chair.

“Oh, that’s right. You’re too busy wallowing in self-pity and driving away your friends,” Sands said, with a sage little nod.

El’s head whipped around. “What did you say?”

“Don’t act like you didn’t hear me. You think I don’t know what you’ve been doing these past few months?” Sands uttered a humorless chuckle. “I practically wrote the book on how not to deal with people. You think there’s anything you can do that I won’t know about?”

Shit. So much for his grand plan. Sands had known all along what he was trying to do. Now he felt even worse about their fight. His knuckles twinged with pain, reminding him what a piece of shit he was.

“So Lorenzo got killed. It wasn’t your fault.” Sands shrugged. “Hell, blame me, if you want. I’m the reason you called him here in the first place.”

“I should have told him to wait in the car,” El whispered.

“Which he wouldn’t have done anyway, because he was your friend,” Sands said impatiently, the world’s fastest premiere psychologist. “Let’s go. Come on.”

“No,” El said.

“For fuck’s sake, El. I’m getting sick and tired of looking at you like this. Get your ass off that chair, and come help me.”

El looked at him. For the first time it occurred to him that since the day of the storm, he had not once heard Sands talking to himself. Killing Belinda Harrison had laid something to rest in Sands’ head. Not his madness, but a component of it, perhaps. He had avenged himself, and that knowledge afforded him a measure of peace that had been lacking before.

It was good to know someone had found peace. El would never forget what it had felt like to be stabbed, how the dagger had been hot and horrible as it sank into his flesh. 

Nor would he ever forget the stark relief in Sands’ voice, when the agent had realized he was not dead.

“Why do you care what happens to me?” he asked.

Sands shrugged. “Because.”

“No,” El said. “That is not an answer.”

Sands gave a curt shake of his head, his version of an exasperated eye-rolling. He pursed his lips, and came to sit in the chair beside El again. “All right. Look. Sometimes I hate you. Can’t stand the fucking sight of you.” He paused, and smirked. “Well, you know what I mean.”

El nodded. “I do.”

“Good. And I know some days you hate me, and wish you had never brought me with along you.”

“I do,” El agreed.

“Yes. But, when all is said and done, we are still friends. I have no idea how it happened, but it did. You, El Mariachi, are my friend. Hell, you and Chiclet are the only friends I’ve ever had.”

Sands sighed. “So, is that what you wanted to hear? Does that make you feel better?”

El shook his head. In truth, it made him feel worse. He had been responsible for the death of all the friends who had come before Sands. He could no reason why things would be any different this time.

Then, with that maddening way he had of reading El’s mind, Sands said, “And I’m not going anywhere. Savvy? I’m still here, and I’m still standing.

“But just because I’m still standing doesn’t mean I’m standing still. So you have a choice, El. You can get up out of that chair, and you can help me find Chiclet’s brother, or you can stay where you are, and always wonder what might have happened if you _had_ gotten up.”

Sands stood up. “Either way, I’m leaving in ten minutes.” He went into the house.

El sat there for a long moment, thinking.

He knew Sands was telling the truth. If he chose to stay here, Sands would still go. Because he felt compelled to help Chiclet. Because he hated sitting still. Because the voices in his head were getting restless. Because he needed a challenge and the thrill of a new hunt. Whatever the reasons were, Sands had decided to go, and nothing would change his mind, even if he had to go alone.

And that was it, he realized. Sands had decided his own future. El had nothing to do with it. He was not responsible for Sands. When something bad happened to the agent, it would not be his fault.

Then he swiftly amended that thought. _If_ something bad happened. Sands was more than capable of taking care of himself; he had proven that time and time again. He bore the scars from the disasters in his life – and not all those scars were physical – but he had survived. He was still standing.

But not standing still.

El rose to his feet. He raised his eyes skyward. “Thank you, my love,” he whispered.

He went into the house, but no further. He stood just inside the living room, gazing at the piano in the corner, and the sheet music laid atop it.

Sands walked up from the rear of the house. He wore all four of his gunbelts, two criss-crossing his hips, and the two shoulder holsters. He was carrying a duffel bag filled with spare boxes of ammunition. There was no hesitation in his step.

Then, although El had not moved or done anything to signal his presence, Sands stopped in his tracks. He waited.

So El spoke up.

“Wait,” he said. He tried to smile, and found that it wasn’t as hard as he had thought it would be.

“I’m going with you.”

*******

END


End file.
